narratives of grieving african-americans about racism in the lives of deceased family members

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NARRATIVES OF GRIEVINGAFRICAN-AMERICANS ABOUTRACISM IN THE LIVES OFDECEASED FAMILY MEMBERSPAUL C. ROSENBLATT a & BEVERLY R. WALLACE aa University of Minnesota , St. Paul, Minnesota, USAPublished online: 16 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: PAUL C. ROSENBLATT & BEVERLY R. WALLACE (2005) NARRATIVESOF GRIEVING AFRICAN-AMERICANS ABOUT RACISM IN THE LIVES OF DECEASED FAMILYMEMBERS, Death Studies, 29:3, 217-235, DOI: 10.1080/07481180590916353

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NARRATIVES OF GRIEVING AFRICAN-AMERICANSABOUT RACISM IN THE LIVES OF DECEASED

FAMILY MEMBERS

PAUL C. ROSENBLATT and BEVERLY R. WALLACE

University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

As part of a comprehensive interview study on African-American grief, theauthors explored how racism is incorporated into narratives about a deceasedfamily member. To the extent that experiences of racism are pervasive inAfrican-American life and to the extent that narratives about a person whohas died generally account for the life experiences, achievements, character, andchallenges faced by the deceased, the authors expected narratives about a deceasedAfrican-American to deal with the person’s encounters with racism. In fact, mostof the 26 African-Americans who were interviewed spoke about racism in the lifeof the deceased. Many talked about racism blocking the deceased from gettingahead occupationally and in other ways and about how the deceased resistedor stood up to racism. Some people spoke about the ways the deceased taught themto deal with racism. The narratives that indicated that the deceased had rarely orever talked about racism still made clear that the deceased lived in a racist worldbut chose not to bring racism into family conversation. The findings suggest that aview of African-American grieving that is insensitive to racism in African-Amer-ican experience may lead to unhelpful grief support or counseling.

Life’s challenges can be quite different if one is African-Americanthan if one is European-American. African-Americans must dealwith racism, the small insults and bruises of everyday life andthe major deprivations, threats, losses, blows, and frustrations thatcan be devastating and that can block a person from access tomuch that is desired, needed, and deserved.

Narratives are often central to the grief process (Attig, 1996;Harvey, 1996; Harvey, Carlson, Huff, & Green, 2001; Neimeyer,2001). The narratives people come to as they grieve might typically

Received 12 June 2004; accepted 29 October 2004.Address correspondence to Paul C. Rosenblatt, Department of Family Social Science,

290 McNeal Hall, 1985 Buford Avenue, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108-6140.E-mail: [email protected]

217

Death Studies, 29: 217–235, 2005Copyright # Taylor & Francis Inc.ISSN: 0748-1187 print/1091-7683 onlineDOI: 10.1080/07481180590916353

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include a great deal about the person who died, including who theperson was, what the person experienced and did, and how theperson contended with challenges. A narrative about a deceasedperson’s life also defines the narrator’s relationship with thedeceased, and how much the grieving person has lost because ofthe death (Rosenblatt, 2000).

As part of a comprehensive study of African-Americangrief (Rosenblatt & Wallace, in press), we investigated the questionof how grieving African-Americans talk about racism in the lifeof the deceased. The study was designed to explore African-American culture(s) and experiences living in a society in whichby numerous indicators, including life expectancy (e.g., Arias,2004) and economic well being (United States Bureau of theCensus, 2003, 2004), African-Americans are not as well off asEuropean-Americans. One concept that is central in explainingthe many indicators of relatively poor well-being is racism. Racismhas been and remains a powerful force in African-American life(Clark, Anderson, Clark, & Williams, 1999; Feagin & McKinney,2003; Jones, 2000). It takes many forms, including environmentalracism (Bullard, 1990), medical racism (Smedley, Stith, & Nelson,2003), and racism in the distribution of income and wealth(Collins, Leondar-Wright, & Sklar, 1999).

With racism so prominent in the lives of African-Americans,the question arises, In what ways do African-American narrativesabout a person who died deal with racism? A narrative aboutracism in the life of the deceased might address deprivation, loss,and pain that hampered and shaped the life of the deceased. Itcould talk about who the deceased could have been and what thedeceased could have achieved if there had not been racism, aboutthe efforts of the deceased to cope with racism, and the ways thatthe coping represented important characteristics of the deceasedand offered lessons to others. It could also talk about the personalqualities that enabled the deceased to resist and transcend racismor to have a good life despite racism and about how strong thedeceased was in not letting racism grind her or him down.

All this is not to say that the narratives of grieving African-Americans concerning a family member who died will deal onlywith racism or that they necessarily would deal with racism. Butwith racism so significant in African-American life, it seemslikely that racism would also be significant in the narratives many

218 P. C. Rosenblatt and B. R. Wallace

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grieving African-Americans construct about a deceased familymember. In light of our earlier work on grief (Rosenblatt, 2000;Rosenblatt & Elde, 1990), such narratives would be part of definingand honoring the deceased, giving meaning to the life of thedeceased and the relationship of the deceased to the person whois grieving, explaining why the feelings of the grieving personare what they are, and defining how much the grieving person lostas a result of the death.

Method

Twenty-six African-American adults who were residents of eithera midwestern metropolitan area or one in the southeast wereinterviewed. They were recruited through announcements innewspapers and on a radio station serving the African-American community, through announcements on bulletinboards in churches serving the African-American community,and through word of mouth. The announcement said, ‘‘For a studyof African-American grief following a death, we are looking foradult African-Americans willing to be interviewed.’’ That state-ment was followed by contact information. Everyone who madecontact with us and with whom an interview could be workedout was interviewed.

The interviewer was Beverly R. Wallace, who is African-American, which was important in recruiting interviewees, gainingrapport, drawing out narratives, asking good follow-up questions,and, in the end, interpreting what people had to say.

The intensive qualitative interviews averaged slightly less than2 hours and dealt with a wide range of grief issues. In this article wefocus primarily on narratives about racism. Interviews were usuallycarried out in the interviewee’s home or office. Interviewees wereasked to focus on one death, though four talked about two. Theinterviews were structured to some extent by an interview guidethat included questions about the interviewee, the interviewee’sfamily, and the person who died. It asked for the interviewee’sstory of the death and included questions about the life of the per-son who died. The questions that most frequently elicited the nar-ratives that are discussed in this article were, ‘‘In what ways do youthink X’s life was affected by racism or discrimination?’’ ‘‘As youthink back on the life of the deceased, do you ever think about

Racism in African-American Grief Narratives 219

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how that life was affected by racism or discrimination? If so, whatkinds of things do you think about?’’ But the interviews were onlysemi-structured, as interviewees were encouraged to tell their stor-ies as they chose. Eventually, in most interviews most of our ques-tions were answered, but not necessarily with direct questions fromthe interviewer. So not everyone quoted here was responding toany of those three questions about the experiences of the deceasedwith racism. Also, as interviewees told their stories and brought uptheir issues, additional questions that were not in the interviewguide were sometimes asked to clarify matters, to draw more outabout the story, to provide respectful and supportive listening,and to follow possible hunches about the situation being described.

The interviews seem to have validly tapped intervieweeexperiences and feelings in that interviewees would speak at lengthand with intensity. All offered substantial narratives, as opposed toanswers of a few words, a sentence, or even a few sentences. Whatthey had to say seemed richly accessible to them. There is a val-idity in researching matters so significant in people’s lives that theyspeak about them in these ways.

Participants

Nineteen women and 7 men were interviewed. One man andwoman, a married couple, were interviewed together. All otherswere interviewed alone. Interviewees ranged in age from 30 to76 with a median of 50, and in formal education from 11 yearsto the Ph.D. level. Seventeen had at least a bachelor’s degree.Compared to the general population of African-Americans, theinterviewees were better educated. (In the 2000 U.S. Census,17% of African-Americans age 25 or older had at least a Bachelor’sdegree versus 65% of our sample—see www.census.gov=pubinfo=www=multimedia=AfricanAm.html.)

The Deaths

Of the focal deaths, 11 were of a mother, 4 were of a father or step-father, 5 were of a son, and 3 were of a spouse. Some intervieweestalked about the death of a sibling, parent-in-law, grandparent, oruncle. The time since the deaths ranged from 2 weeks to 39 years,with a median of 8.5 years.


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Transcribing

Audiotapes of the interviews were transcribed verbatim, includingevery sound and pause. Paul C. Rosenblatt transcribed most inter-views and thoroughly checked the few transcriptions made bysomeone else.

Coding

The transcriptions were coded through an open coding (Strauss &Corbin, 1998, pp. 101–122) procedure. As is often recommendedfor qualitative research (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995, pp. 56–58;Kvale, 1996, pp. 176–178), we had discussed the interviews at sev-eral points in the interview process, exploring where the codingand writing would be likely to go and whether we needed to shar-pen, alter, or add questions about this matter or that. We did not, inthese discussions, decide to change how we asked about narrativesconcerning the life of the person whose death was the focus of theinterview. But those discussions sensitized us to the importance ofthose narratives and the major features of the narratives in theearly interviews. Because of those discussions, the open codingwe eventually carried was not open in a naive sense. The codingwas as open as possible, not unaware of previous discussions butbracketing them to the extent possible.

We first separately carried out ‘‘open coding’’ of several tran-scripts in detail, including coding many matters beyond what thisarticle addresses. We then discussed our coding and found we werein good agreement on the initial coding. This coding and agree-ment was not at the finest level of analysis but at the level of themajor categories, themes, and emphases. This process yielded atentative guide to coding, and all the transcripts were coded withthat guide in mind by the first author. The second author thenchecked the first author’s preliminary coding, challenging codingthat seemed wrong or inadequate. Where there were disagree-ments or differences of opinion about coding, we talked thingsover. If we did not agree or if it was not clear that we agreed,we dropped the relevant material. Very little was dropped, andnone of what was dropped was relevant to the focus of this article.Beyond this point, the ‘‘coding’’ became even more fine-grainedwith coding interacting with writing. So the next round of the


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coding involved drafting a manuscript that included attention tosome details not initially coded or discussed. Again the codingwas checked by the second author through careful examinationof the first draft, and it was only after she validated that detailedcoding that we went ahead with preparing a polished version ofthe manuscript based on that coding.

Quotes

In quoting people, names and other identifying information havebeen changed. We have omitted most ‘‘uh’s’’, ‘‘er’s’’, and othernonlexical sounds, restarts, and many instances of words andphrases like ‘‘okay,’’ ‘‘you know,’’ ‘‘I mean,’’ ‘‘like,’’ ‘‘whatever,’’etc. We have also deleted most repetitions of the same word,phrase, or sentence within a quote.

Results

Four narratives about a child’s death did not address the child’sexperience with racism, but all but one of the 22 narratives aboutan adult death spoke of racism in the life of the deceased. Onewoman asked that the taperecorder be turned off as she spokeabout the matter, so we have no record of what she said beyondthat racism had a significant impact on the life of the deceased.Some spoke in detail about specific incidents; others spoke ingeneralities.

‘‘She Had Very Few Choices’’

Fourteen of the 21 narratives about a deceased adult’s experiencewith racism spoke about racism causing substantial deprivations inthe life of the deceased. Racism affected life chances, financial wellbeing, status, education, personal growth, and advancement. Someaccounts talked about racism affecting the deceased in every way,but then, as did Franklin’s below, focused on racism that was cen-tral to blocking the person’s advancement in the vocational fieldthe person had cared most about. In fact, it was common in the14 detailed accounts of the deprivations of racism that there wasa focus on the deceased being blocked in career or occupationaladvancement.


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Interviewer: In what way do you think your stepfather’s life was affectedby racism or discrimination?

Franklin: In every way possible. He would have been, if he hadgone in just a straight military route, he should have been a four star gen-eral, because of what he was able to accomplish, and what he had done,and how well he was able to get things done. General Mays [who was Afri-can-American] was someone that he was proud of. He was proud of the factthat it was a Black man who was a general. . . . He always knew that it waspossible. He was in during the Korean conflict, and as a result, remember,that’s when Truman integrated the troops. He knew before, because he wasa part of it before they were ever integrated. He wasn’t integrated into troopthings. It was an all Black group. . . . He loved being in an all Black group.He didn’t like what that meant, being in an all Black group, because itmeant everything you get is going to be the last of anything, the worst ofeverything. . . . And you’re going to be looked down on at all points in time.So you have to battle both the declared enemy, as well as the one who issupposedly your ally.

The deceased might be described as having succeededbeyond what would have been typical for African-Americans inher or his time and place but still frustrated and blocked in achiev-ing fulfillment occupationally or in acquiring an education thatwould have enabled such fulfillment.

Charlotte: [My mother] graduated from a business school, which was stillnot the norm in that era. . . . She went to high school. . . .There weren’tmany schools for you to go to if you were Black. . . . Now they all wentbeyond what your average Black person did at that time, those three girlsdid. . . . They grew up in a home their father had purchased for them. Thatwas unheard of. My grandfather was a postman. That was not norm. Andso that tells you why she might have been someone who wasn’t fulfilled. . . .Yeah, she could have had anxieties about possibly not achieving.

Clyde: She was a maid for these rich people. And she would see howthings were wasted. And how she wasn’t able to get certain jobs, becauseshe was Black.

Toni: She was not allowed to go to college. And she always wanted to go tocollege, and she was brilliant. My grandmother, I mean truly, and I’m notmaking her a hero, my grandmother was absolutely brilliant.

In the three instances cited immediately above, the narrativesaid that the deceased had been interested in moving up andwas fully capable of doing so, but racism denied the person the


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opportunity for upward mobility and access to better education orto higher status, more fulfilling jobs. The deceased was a good andcapable person who was stymied by a corrupt and cruel system.

‘‘She Did Not Allow that to Dictate to Her’’

Some of the narratives emphasized that despite racist deprivations,losses, humiliations, and difficulties, the deceased was able to tran-scend the problems and achieve a productive and rewarding life.

Calvin: I think she’d be real happy with her life, because she impacted thelives of people, which is really what life is about. And you can do that inmany arenas. You got the classroom; you got the home; you got thechurch; you have the work place. There are many arenas. And the arenathat God placed her in, she [did] well. I think she’d be happy. . . .Comingup in the era in which she lived, of course she knew about the ‘‘colored’’signs and all that type of thing. And had to do day work and that type ofwork. Had seen as a youth . . .Blacks get shot or whatever for no reason.Mistreated. But she did not allow that to dictate to her the principles thatshe would teach us. She always taught us, ‘‘Hey, you do whatever’s right.. . .You can maintain your integrity and thrive in this system.’’ . . . She didn’tallow it to keep her from doing what she had to do. . . . We came up andhad a rich home. I look all the way back, and my dad always had a newcar. And they always had Sears and Montgomery Wards credit cards. . . .We never went to school raggedy.

‘‘He Would Battle; He Stood Up’’

Quite a few narratives included accounts of how the deceased wasstrong in the face of racism and challenged it.

Norma: My father’s attitude was that he was the white man’s worst night-mare.

Seven accounts were rich in detail about efforts by thedeceased to stand up to racism.

Loretta: She went to junior college. But we were talking back in the 30’s,and us Black folks didn’t have a whole lot of opportunities. . . . We’re from[name of city] . . . and racism abounds. It’s just . . .blatant. . . . She went toschool with people who became the doctors, the lawyers, the judges. . . .Back in those days, the 30’s and the 40’s, Black women should only aspireto be domestics. Either you were a cook or you were somebody’s maid, and


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my mom didn’t have either one of those. And because she couldn’t pursuethe things that she wanted to, she became a lifetime member of theNAACP, and worked to effect a change in the status quo. I can rememberwhen we had death threats, because of my parents’ activeness. They wentcrazy, but they effected a lot of changes.

Kenneth: My grandfather was a lifetime member of the NAACP.. . . He was part of the civil rights movement. He motivated and initiateda lot of the civil rights activities that went on in the city. [His union] wasan all-Black union. He got them all to join the NAACP as well. And hewas given several awards by the NAACP. So he saw racism and the exploi-tation of labor by corporations as an evil. . . . Grandfather worked for acompany . . . and . . . a large part of the labor force . . .were African Ameri-cans. And they were not getting the same wages as the Eurocentric Amer-icans were for doing the same work. And he saw that as an evil. And so theunion decided that they were going to go on strike. So he didn’t make manyfriends with the owners. . . . Obviously they were European Americans. . . .So he didn’t make a lot of friends at first. Until they actually went on strike,and none of the other unions would cross the picket lines either. (laughs)All right? And so after that he made a few friends who were in very highplaces in the [company]. The president came to his house, and that wasunheard of for a white man to come to a Black man’s house. . . . He wasan astute politician.

Ron: My dad . . .had this strong resistance to the domination of the whiteculture. He was in college, he was working as a dry cleaner to get somemoney. And he was doing better work and more work than a . . .whitedude. And that white dude was getting more money than him. So he gotmad and said he’ll never work for a white man the rest of his life. Andhe never did. He never did. Now he might beg a white man for somemoney to help him with his projects in the church, but he never was gonnalet a white man dominate and control him in any form. So one of the thingsthat we all used to get, and it was subtle things like, ‘‘You’re gonna call meMr. (last name). You’re not gonna call me (first name).’’ . . .He’d say, ‘‘I gotthat white man straight today. He tried to call me (first name). I made himcall me Mr. (last name).’’

Some narratives, like the one quoted immediately below,focused on one or a few specific instances of the deceased standingup to racism. They were not the only such instances in the person’slife, but they symbolized general dispositions and experiences.

Barbara: Mama did some day work for [white families]. . . . She was at thishouse, and she was doing work, and this child not only was disrespectful,called her by her first name, and she had told the child to stop doing some-thing. The child kept right on. And Mama grabbed that child and


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pinched. . . . And the child was being disrespectful racially, too. AndMama. . .wasn’t going to take it from the child. So then she told them shewouldn’t be working for them anymore.

Some narratives about the deceased challenging racism wereabout persistence in the face of threats and humiliation.

Verna: He would say. . . that they don’t give Black men chances. So hewas a victim. I didn’t know what that meant. I was too young to reallyget it. When he bought the land in [the suburb], they went out to look atthis land in a white community. Another couple was there, and they saidto this Jewish man, ‘‘Whatever they’re offering you, we’ll pay double,because we don’t feel that niggers should be out here.’’ . . .The next day[the Jewish man] came over to Mother and Dad’s house and said, ‘‘Youoffered me the least on the land, but I’m going to give it to you becauseof the racism.’’ And he repeated what the couple had said. And Dad sawthat as a gift from God, that God’s transcending any racism. Now oncethe house was built, we’ve had crosses burned on our lawn. And that wasthe first time we ever heard him getting a gun. Up until that time we didn’thave a gun in our house. We called the police. They didn’t do anything.. . . I was ready to move out. ‘‘Get me back to the city. We don’t want tobe out here anyway. . . .’’ And we’re going to a white school. But he says,‘‘No, we’re staying. God gave it to us, and we’re keeping it. We’re not goingto be run off our land.’’ He was a . . . tiny man . . . and he was abused on thejob. . . . They would tease him, or they would some days havethe . . . conveyor go faster than it would normally go. So that they couldeither make him hurt himself or make him quit. But he said, ‘‘I started sing-ing my songs and glorifying God, and I made it.’’

Some narratives about challenging racism were about havingthe character and determination to get past difficulties created byracism.

Len: I think because she was the type of fighter she was, she would takethose challenges on with a sense of excitement. . . .Being an African-Amer-ican woman who was very outgoing, outspoken, and also very large interms of her height and her size, and had a deeper voice. When she talked,she had a real powerful . . . she had a tenor voice. And so a lot of people gotintimidated, even when she didn’t mean to intimidate, quote, and I say‘‘white America.’’ ‘‘White America,’’ especially white males, got very inti-midated by her, and so on the job she faced a lot of unjust persecutionand judgments, simply because they were intimidated. . . . I rememberone situation where this happened to be a older white woman. . . . Andthese crazy allegations . . . partly because she was just intimidated. Andpartly jealousy, because [my wife] did move up through the ranks, and


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probably surpassed her. You know, in our day and age all that stuff thatcomes up with that. You got it because of affirmative . . . and da-da-da.But [my wife] was very skilled at maneuvering and working throughthat . . . and the individuals that got so crazy with some of the stuff, allega-tions that the company knew was crazy. And the company ending up set-tling with the woman . . . just to keep her mouth shut. . . . [My wife] was veryupset, because she thought that was giving in to a very unjust portrayal,who not only she was, but who the company was, simply because thiswoman was intimidated by who [my wife was] as an African-Americanwoman. And it came out in the statement that the woman had made thatit was clearly that, ‘‘You’re big and you’re Black, and when you come intoa room I just feel uncomfortable with you.’’ . . .That was an incident I seenher work through. . . . I know many others, in terms of just even being aAfrican-American woman in the reservists. It tends to be white males,and white males who have inadequacy for whatever reason that theycouldn’t actually become a police officer, so they want to play police officeron the weekend (laughs). So bein’ in the midst of that, and basically risingup through the ranks to be a sergeant over them, and to have to deal withattitudes and perceptions. I think it says a lot about her character and herdetermination.

‘‘She Would Make Us Aware’’

Nine of the narratives about the deceased dealing with racism werealso about intergenerational relations. The narrative spoke of whatthe grieving person learned through years of contact with thedeceased about dealing with racism. It could be about strugglesthe two had with each other about how to deal with racism. Itcould be about how the deceased had protected the grieving per-son from racism. In a few instances, it seems that dealing withracism was at the core of the relationship. For example, in thequote that follows, of all the things that could possibly explainhow stepfather and stepson got along or had their difficulties, itis striking that a key basis for explaining the relationship is howthey argued about racism. Racism can be so big in the lives of Afri-can-Americans that it can be a central ingredient for a narrativethat illuminates the relationship between family members.

Franklin: It was late in the night, where the radio went off, and as it wentoff it played ‘‘Star Spangled Banner.’’ And I reached over and turned it off.. . . I had been in the . . .Air Force. . . . He was still in the Air Force. Verypatriotic man. In spite of all the things that he kinda understood he’d gonethrough . . .he’d suffered through. He joined the Air Force at an early


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age. . . . So he was very, very patriotic, very proud of it. And I mean, veryproud. . . . The conversation then kind of got heated, ‘cause I’m pointing outthe facts of it. . . . It made no sense to me to talk about fighting for the Amer-ican flag. It made no sense about this red, white, and blue stuff, when it doesnot embrace us. And he was saying, ‘‘But I fought for it.’’ So I’m challeng-ing and condemning. . ., ‘‘But, Dad, wait, wait. I’ve been there. I was there.I’m not condemning you. It’s not your fault. . . .’’ And . . .he did not recog-nize . . . that thesis.

In a related example, a significant part of the narrative about adeceased grandfather focused on how he had understood child-hood struggles of his grandson with racism and so had protectedhim from parental punishment for in effect resisting racism.

Kenneth: I have so much to celebrate, things that I can remember aboutmy grandfather. I remember I got sent home from school, and the familymade a decision that they wanted to whip. There was a full cry out for myblood. . . . My grandfather (chuckling) said, ‘‘Leave him alone.’’ And thatwas it. (laughs) That was it. ‘Cause he understood, and what happened wasthat this was after the desegregation, and I’m going through this process ofgoing to an all white school. And he knew my spirit wasn’t one to be takingcalling me all these names (laughs). That was so right. And they think, ‘‘He’sover there acting crazy, and he ain’t got good sense.’’ But he was far wiser. Heknew what was going on. . . .He said, ‘‘Leave him alone.’’ And that was that.

Some narratives emphasized how the deceased socialized thegrieving person to deal with racism. For example, in talking abouther mother’s struggles with racism, Patricia spoke of the ways hermother prepared Patricia and her siblings to deal with racism.

Patricia: She instilled in us was just helping us to feel good about who weare, but letting us know that when we went to other places outside our littleBlack community, that . . .more than likely we were not gonna be acknowl-edged for who we were or what we really had to offer . . . that whatever wehad probably would be questioned, not accepted. I remember times whenwe would go into stores and we would go into what you might considermore expensive stores. . . . She would make us aware to make sure thatwhatever we did, it didn’t look in anyway suspicious just because shewanted to protect us from . . .humiliation. . . . It was not to a point that itmade you nervous, but she’d make sure if we had a bag, make sure youcheck the bag in front. Or if you’re doing something looking in the bagto look for something that take out to do that openly. . . .I still do the samething. . . . I can’t really think of a lot to say about . . . racism, other than justthe reality of it, just to be prepared for it. But she didn’t do it to a point to


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make you feel weighed down by what . . . you might experience, but asa reminder and as a caution.

In another example, Andrew talked about how his mothersocialized him to deal with white people.

Andrew: Mama was the one that taught me to talk to white folks. Andwhen they do you wrong, you have to tell them, and not allow them to,you know, I got that from her. Every time I [deal] with one, when I’m facedwith it, she was the one that taught me, ‘‘You tell them. They don’t alwaystell you.’’ . . . Something be wrong . . . she’d get loud, kind of so loud. ButI see she would talk to the white folk.

Another way in which some of the narratives were about fam-ily relations was when people talked about how a parent or grand-parent who had been blocked by racism from getting aheadeducationally or occupationally appreciated the educational oroccupational successes of the narrator. In a sense, the deceasedhad experienced progress against racism through the success ofthe narrator.

Clyde:Mymomhad a really hard life. She worked in the . . . tobacco capitolof the south. . . .Mymomworked in the fields as a girl growing up. She was areally good student, I think. I think she shoulda went to college, and I thinkbecause she had a family I don’t think she was able to do it. But I think thatwas one of her aspirations, and I think she kinda lived . . . through me on thatcollege piece. . . . She wanted to know classes I went to, what I was taking, or,she just wanted to know how it was like. And being African American in apredominantly white institution, but again I was a part of segregation as wellas desegregation, and so I was the first generation of kids to go to school withEuropeans. And so she always wanted to know how that was.

Here is another instance of how narratives about the deceaseddealing with racism were also about family relationships.

Verna: [A foundation] hired me to do some anti-racism programs. AndI says, ‘‘I’ll do them under one agreement, that you hire my father withme. And he gets to tell his story.’’ And that was the best thing I could everhave given him, for him to sit in a circle . . . and tell his story, how he has beenmistreated and how that was real for him, racism. And then to have whitepeople process with him the pain, and apologize. We did five of those, andhe was like, without an education; he’s still somebody. He’s still pretty power-ful. So once in a while I look at those pictures, and I think, ‘‘That did changehim,’’ that as a Black man he got respect for the first time.


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Willa’s narrative that follows, about her mother dealing withracism, can be understood as being about how her mother foughtracism in order to benefit her children. So here is another instanceof the prominence of family relationships in narratives about theplace of racism in the life of the deceased.

Willa: My brother and I . . . integrated the library in our town, or I did,‘cause I kept sayin’ , ‘‘Why can’t I go to the library?’’ Mom said, ‘‘I don’tsee any reason you can’t. I pay taxes just like everybody else.’’ . . . I wasabout 6 or 7 years old when that happened. So it had to be 1960. And sheknew the librarian, because the town librarian would meet with, well, once,twice a year, all the teachers in the County School System would meettogether. It’s Black and White, and the town librarian would meet withthem. And so she knew Lila. . . . She said, ‘‘You go on up there, and if Lilasays anything to you, you have her call me.’’ I went up there, and I toldher whose daughter I was, and I said, ‘‘I want to check out some books.’’She said, ‘‘Okay . . .what kind of books do you like?’’ And after that, I spentsome of my happiest moments, I loved to read. . . . I would go up there, andour town library was a converted old house, an old Victorian. And it hadwindow seats. . . . I would spend, especially rainy days, sittin’ on the windowseat under the eaves reading Nancy Drew and the Dana girls, and so it wentjust very smoothly. Same thing with the theater. Always before, Black folkshad gone up in what my mom called ‘‘The Buzzards Nest. . . .’’ My brotherand I used to love Christopher Lee ‘‘Dracula’’ movies. So we said, ‘‘We wantto go to the movies.’’ ‘‘Fine, but you go right in the front door and go rightdown the front, and if they say something to you, tell them you want yourmoney back.’’ They never said anything. People had never tried. By thattime the Civil Rights Act had been passed, so there was no keepin’ you backif you wanted to. People never said anything.

‘‘We Need to Start Putting Those Things Behind Us’’

Not every narrative offered details about racism in the life of thedeceased. Some simply talked about the deceased trying to getemotional distance from racism or to leave racism behind.

Interviewer: What do you think he would say about his life being affec-ted by racism or discrimination?

Rosalyn: He always had a positive attitude about those things.Racism and, because when we would talk on it and discuss it, um, he wouldalways say, ‘‘We need to start putting those things behind us and start look-ing forward and try to get along and work together and . . . love each other.’’That’s the type of person he was. He had love in his heart for all people.


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Four interviewees said that they had no direct informationabout problems the deceased had with racism. But their narrativesstill indicated that racism was significant in the life of the deceased.For example, the first of the two accounts quoted immediatelybelow refers to a father’s skill in protecting his wife and childrenfrom racism, and apparently part of that was not telling themanything about his experiences with and knowledge of racism. Inthe second quote a widow seems to say that her husband was hired,despite racist resistance to the hiring, because the governmentdemanded that his employer hire Black people.

Interviewer: Were there any issues of racial discrimination that affectedyour mom’s life?

Vickie: I don’t think so. I think my father did a very good job ofprotecting . . . us. My sisters, and they’re right about this, and I have alwayssaid, Daddy always taught us what people should be like. . . . I think part ofit was my father sold air conditioners for Wards, and he was actually thefirst Black person they ever let go into those houses . . . in that part of thecountry. (Interviewer: So they trusted your dad.) Uh huh. And evennow, and now we grew up in Memphis, and I’m 40, so he was there whenMartin Luther King was assassinated. He had to have seen a lot of things.I have never heard my father talk about it once.

Interviewer: In what ways do you think [your husband’s] life was affec-ted by racism or discrimination?

Jane: I don’t think it was. It might have been back in the days whenhe was coming up, because he was so much older than I am, and I’m prettysure back there in those days it was rough. But . . . the only thing I know hisjob. . . . They didn’t have no Blacks on the job. They all white. And thegovernment stepped in and told them that they had to hire some Blacks.And he was the first minority to get that job. They did not want to hireno minority, because the job paid a lot. He made like 60 some thousanddollars a year, and they didn’t want to pay minority that kind of money.

Another example in which there was no narrative about theexperiences of the deceased with racism that still said that thedeceased lived in a racist world referred to a father’s participationin the Million Man March and to a remark he made about growingup in the Jim Crow era.

Interviewer: How do you think your dad’s life was impacted, or was itaffected by, issues of racism or discrimination?

Angela: If it was, he didn’t share that with me. I know he did partici-pate in The Million ManMarch, but he really didn’t share that with me, and


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I can remember, I think there was a movie called, ‘‘Mississippi Burning,’’and some friends of mine that I went to high school with, we had gone tosee it. And I had asked him, ‘‘Are you gonna go see this movie?’’ And hesaid, ‘‘No. I grew up in that era, and I just don’t want to see that.’’

Discussion and Conclusions

The grief literature is rich in accounts of how the development ofnarrative can be helpful in coming to terms with a loss (Attig, 1996;Harvey, 1996; Harvey et al., 2001; Neimeyer, 2001), and how thenarratives of grieving people are key to understanding the meaningmaking of the grief process (Gilbert, 2002; Nadeau, 1998). Mean-ing making does not occur in a vacuum. It is responsive to thesocial ecologies in which people live. Meaning making about adeath must make meaning about the social world in which thedeceased and the narrator have been living. So when racism is aprominent experience of the deceased and the narrator, the griev-ing person is likely to develop narratives that speak about racism.

Judging by the research reported here, as part of meaningmaking in coming to a narrative to deal with a family death, manyAfrican-Americans develop narratives about racism in the life ofthe deceased. In addressing how much the deceased sufferedbecause of racism, these narratives speak of the character and spe-cial abilities and strengths of the deceased while accounting forwhy the deceased did not have as much status, income, or wellbeing in the larger society as he or she would have if white. Thesenarratives frame and explain the deceased’s bravery and capacityto overcome great disadvantage. They help to link the deceasedto the grieving person to the extent that they help to explainaspects of the relationship of the two—for example, the effortsof the deceased to teach the person who is now grieving to copewith racism.

Some African-Americans might choose not to frame anyaspect of their narrative about a deceased family member in termsof racism. But nobody we interviewed did that. The closest thatcame to that was when people said that the deceased did not talkmuch about racism. But that seemed to be not a denial of thesignificance of racism in the life of the deceased but a reflectionof the fact that in some African-American families people do nottalk about racism or about many experiences of racism (St. Jean


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& Feagin, 1998). They may be trying to avoid spreading the pain,fear, and anger concerning racism to other family members. A per-son may want to leave the pain behind rather than talk about it.And for many African-Americans there are so many experiencesof racism that there is little interest in describing what could bean interminably long, daily list of unpleasant experiences. So evena narrative that has little to say about racism in the life of thedeceased may still speak in meaningful ways about the emotionaland practical significance of racism in the life of the deceased.

We hope that the results reported here will sensitize readers tothe significance of racism in African-American narratives aboutdeceased family members. There is a large body of literature thatsays European-Americans greatly underestimate the incidence andvirulence of racism in the lives of African-Americans (e.g., hooks,1992, McIntosh, 1988; Moon, 1999; Rosenblatt, Karis, & Powell,1995; van Dijk, 1992; Zane, 1997). So while an African-Americanoffering grief support or counseling may understand the signifi-cance of racism in the narratives of grieving African-Americans,a European-American may not. In fact, perhaps one factor under-lying the low rate of utilization by African-Americans of mentalhealth services (Cooper-Patrick et al., 1999) is that European-Americans who provide such services may not have sufficientopenness to African-American narratives that speak about racism.

From another perspective, if narratives about deceased familymembers are in part about family heritage and legacy, narrativesabout racism in the life of a deceased family member say that partof the heritage and legacy that African-Americans pass on to theirfamily members is their history of contending against, resisting,and transcending racism.

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narratives of grieving african-americans about racism in the lives of deceased family members

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