WASHINGTON ― The African-American owners of six funeral homes in Harrison County, Mississippi, filed a lawsuit this week against the coroner and other elected officials, alleging they favor white-run businesses for body removals and other mortuary services. They claim this discriminatory practice has gone on for decades, deeply hurting their businesses.
An attorney for the county board of supervisors told The Huffington Post that in most cases, when a body is moved from the scene of a death, families decide which business handles arrangements, not the coroner. He also said the pathologist, who died two years ago, did autopsies at a white-owned business because he preferred the facilities. (Bodies that need autopsies are now sent to Jackson.)
Funeral directors have long served as pillars of black communities in the United States. They have stood on the front lines of race-based violence, acting as both political leaders and civil rights activists. Eddie Hartwell, a black pastor, was born in Mississippi across the street from a funeral home. His family has been in funeral service for more than 75 years, he said, and he helped out his uncle as a kid before going on to mortuary school after high school. He now has his own business.
When segregation was strong, Hartwell said, the coroner “would call the black funeral homes for the black body, white funeral homes for the white body.” But these days, the coroner “calls the white funeral homes for everybody, almost exclusively,” he added. “That’s just wrong.”
County Coroner Gary Hargrove, elected in 1996, has authority over deaths that fall under the public interest, including suicides, homicides and accidents. There are more than 1,200 deaths per year that fall in this category, according to the lawsuit, and about 80 percent of the decedents are white and 17 percent are African-American.
When a death occurs, privately owned funeral homes may be involved in a number of ways, including removing a body from the scene of the death, cremating remains that have not been claimed by relatives, or providing a facility for an autopsy. For tasks like these, the plaintiffs allege Hargrove, who is white, favors two white-owned businesses — Riemann Family Funeral Homes and Bradford O’Keefe Funeral Homes — and the county allows the practice.
“Don’t presume just because it’s in a lawsuit that it’s true,” said Tim Holleman, the attorney for the county board of supervisors, who said he is also protecting the interests of Hargrove for the time being. “I think they’re trying to create a huge deal out of a very small issue,” he added. (Hargrove did not respond to requests for comment.)
The plaintiffs claim Hargrove has never called a black-owned funeral home to remove a white decedent, and has told officials it’s not “proper” to do so. They also say he asks white-owned businesses to remove the “extreme majority” of other decedents. Once a body is sent to a funeral home, a distraught family may be reluctant to shop around, and will stick with the business that already has custody of the remains, according to the lawsuit.
Funeral director Sonya Williams-Barnes recalled a car accident in 2013 where the family wanted her business (one of the plaintiffs) to pick up the body, but Riemann was called anyway. In a case last year, she claimed, Riemann was called when a murder-suicide occurred less than 50 yards from her business.
Holleman said that “90 percent of the time, the family is there, and Mr. Hargrove simply says, ‘What funeral home do you want?’ And he would call that one, and they would come remove the body.”
Mindy Engelhorn, whose father died in 2002 during Hurricane Isidore, said that Hargrove immediately asked her family what funeral home they preferred. For the initial removal, she recalled that a funeral home was called that possibly could have been Riemann, but that was the closest business. Hargrove “was very kind to us,” she added. “[He] even gave me, my mother and our small dog a ride to the nearest storm shelter.”
Vendor documents provided by the plaintiffs’ attorneys show dramatic differences in the amount of money going to black- and white-owned funeral homes. Between 2009 and 2012, they show over $119,000 going to Riemann and O’Keefe, and $500 going to one of the plaintiffs. Gretchen Helfrich, one of the attorneys, said those numbers also don’t reflect cases where the family elects to stay with the funeral home that did the removal.
The Riemann funeral home declined to comment. Jeffrey O’Keefe Sr. told HuffPost “just looking at the factual data from their county records, you know, it does kind of indicate some preferential treatment, just looking at the numbers in more recent years.” He added, “I’m not quite sure, obviously, what the rationale is for all of that.”
Holleman said that the late pathologist would only conduct autopsies at Riemann and O’Keefe, and later just at Riemann, so that could account for some of the differences.
Helfrich said that if the county indulged the pathologist’s preference for white funeral homes, “they’re just as culpable,” and that’s only a small part of the picture. The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
Hartwell said that his business has been so negatively affected that his oldest son, also a licensed mortician, has had to leave the area to find work. He said that racism in Mississippi is still so pervasive, “you almost become accustomed to it.” But he added, “Things are changing.”