Louisiana cemetery changes contract after Black deputy denied burial

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Cemetery changes contract after Black deputy denied burial

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
January 29, 2021

The board of a small Louisiana cemetery that denied burial to a Black sheriff’s deputy held an emergency meeting Thursday and removed a whites-only provision from its sales contracts.

“When that meeting was over it was like a weight lifted off of me,” H. Creig Vizena, board president for Oaklin Springs Cemetery in southwest Louisiana, said Thursday night.

He said he was stunned and ashamed to learn two days earlier that the family of Allen Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Darrell Semien, who died Sunday, had been told that he could not be buried at the cemetery near Oberlin because he was African American.

“It’s horrible,” Vizena told The Associated Press on Thursday morning. He said the board members removed the word “white” from a contract stipulation conveying “the right of burial of the remains of white human beings.”

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-louisiana-1bc5dd398b17fc70d69062a3b05bd508

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Source: The Guardian and agencies

Louisiana cemetery told family of Black deputy he couldn't be buried due to 'whites only' policy

Oaklin Springs cemetery’s board has since voted to remove the whites-only provision from its sales contracts

Guardian staff and agencies
Fri 29 Jan 2021 02.59 GMT

The family of a Black sheriff’s deputy in Louisiana said a local cemetery declined to bury his body after he died last week due to a “whites only” policy.

Darrell Semien, an Allen Parish sheriff’s office deputy, died on Sunday at the age of 55. But when his widow Karla went to inquire about his burial at the local Oaklin Springs cemetery, the Semien family said, she was told he couldn’t be buried there.

“I just went to Oaklin Springs cemetery to pick a plot for my husband to be buried . I met with the lady out there and she said she could not sell me a plot because the cemetery is a whites only cemetery,” Semien wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “Wow what a slap in the face.”

Oaklin Springs cemetery confirmed to local station KPLC on Wednesday that a contract from the 1950s mentions “the right of burial of the remains of white human beings”.

The cemetery is located in Allen Parish, Louisiana – where nearly a quarter of residents are Black.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/28/lousiana-oaklin-springs-cemetery-whites-only-policy

[stopdiggin]

1. well isn't that special

no words. just no words ..

[MagickMuffin]

2. The 50's wasn't all that long ago

But racism is deep in some people.

[Midnightwalk]

3. The roots run deep

The board president, H. Creig Vizena, who was “stunned and ashamed” is a member of the Allen Parish police jury which is the “ legislative and executive government of the parish”.

But at the same time the lady who didn’t sell the plot to the widow was his aunt.

Vizena told the news agency his 81-year-old aunt was the woman who denied the Semiens’ request, and she was “relieved of her duties”.

Damn. Racism is so ingrained. So intertwined. Always there.

[Sucha NastyWoman]

4. If that is the case, I find it hard to believe

That he didn’t know what the contract said.

[Midnightwalk]

6. The situation is messed up

Say for a second he didn’t know what the contract said. He still knew his aunt. Maybe he excused her views saying something like she’s an old generation and can’t change her views.

Maybe he wasn’t able or willing to see the problem with that.

Then I go back to he’s in government. What other decisions was he involved in where he wasn’t able to see?

Any way I look at it and no matter the details it really isn’t just a story about denying the cemetery plot.

[denbot]

5. All lives matter..?

Yeah, right.