A Texas widow who planned to bury her husband's ashes in a community cemetery was horrified when she says a cemetery representative told her that they do not allow Hispanic people to be buried there.
Donna Barrera, who was married to her husband, Pedro, for 44 years, told Kiii News that the man in charge of San Domingo Cemetery in the community of Normanna expressly told her that Hispanic and black people could not be buried there.
Jimmy Bradford, head of the San Domingo Cemetery Association, confirmed to Kiii TV on Wednesday that he rejected Barrera’s request.
“He wasn't supposed to be buried there, because he's a Mexican, or of Spanish descent, or whatever you want to say,” Bradford said, noting that his grandfather donated the land to be used as a cemetery for “the people of Normanna.”
Bradford did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.
Fox News Latino notes that this kind of discrimination is illegal as per the 1948 Supreme Court Case, Shelley v. Kraemer. The Supreme Court ruled that racial covenants -- meaning contracts that bar specific racial groups from buying, renting, or occupying a piece of property -- are illegal.
Barrera has now said she plans on suing the cemetery association.
Her case comes a month after Denton, Texas renounced a decades-old city cemetery deed requirement that specified the burial ground was for “whites only.” However, Denton city council member Dalton Gregory clarified to news station WFAA that the deed had long been unenforced, and that people of other races were in fact buried there.
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