White funeral homes and cemeteries did not really begin accepting blacks until about a decade ago, said Eva Cranford, who, with her husband, Robert, owns Robert F. To quell talk that they are fronting for SCI or another white-owned firm, the Unity partners finally wrote an open letter “to the African-American Community” that ran as an advertisement in the Daily News and the Amsterdam News to declare that their business is black-owned.Īt stake is a way of life and an industry that, like the church, was forced by history to become a cog of the African-American community. In recent years, SCI has acquired more than 3,000 funeral homes, and a couple of months ago, it attempted to buy Loewen, which itself owns or operates more than 1,000 funeral homes and more than 400 cemeteries. International of Houston set their sights on black-owned funeral homes as the next area to conquer. “If a family only wants to deal with a black business, they are not gonna want to come to us,” James said.Īnd the question is especially pertinent as white-owned corporations such as the Loewen Group from Canada and Service Corp. ![]() James, one of the six owners of the chapel since 1980, said he bristles every time someone asks him the question.įor a business like his, in a place like Harlem, a question like that can be the kiss of death. Unity refers to one of Harlem’s most venerable funeral homes, Unity Funeral Chapel, which prepared the remains of Malcolm X in 1965, Urban League head Whitney Young in 1971 and the widow of Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, this year. No sooner would Clifford James start talking to a minister when the question would come up.
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