“To me this is just another funeral,” he told reporters at the time. Nonetheless, Hall disavowed any particular significance. It will be cremated by fire bombs.” Police flooded the block, using a garage in the funeral home to sequester the floral arrangements and search them for explosives. One anonymous caller made an ominous promise: “Malcolm X’s body will never be buried. Death threats poured in initially it was difficult to find a church willing to hold the ceremony, so great was the concern about a bombing or shooting. More broadly, the extreme tension following the assassination dominated the funeral proceedings. There was so much damage to the body from the gunfire that I didn’t think it appropriate for anyone other than myself or the staff to see.” “Several of the Muslim brothers wanted to remove Malcolm’s suit and put (traditional burial garments) on him,” Hall said in a 1982 interview with about…time magazine. For Hall, the assignment was difficult in more ways than one.įrom a physical perspective, the Muslim leader’s body had been torn up by bullets - a dozen wounds from the initial shotgun blast that killed him, then many more from a flurry of handgun shots. Malcolm X’s killing at the hands of his former Nation of Islam acolytes was shocking but not surprising his house had been firebombed a few weeks earlier. 21, 1965, Malcolm X himself would receive one of the most memorable funerals Harlem had ever seen. Among the notable Harlemites to mourn there was Malcolm X, who conducted services at Unity on several occasions for Black Muslims. Unity quickly gained a strong reputation. Powell, publisher of the Amsterdam News, a Black New York newspaper, and one of the most successful Black entrepreneurs of his era. Unity had been founded a few years earlier by C.B. Hall graduated in 1956 and took a job at Unity Funeral Home, a Black establishment on Eighth Avenue in Harlem. In that role, Hall met Marilyn Monroe and Thurgood Marshall, among others. While studying he worked as a driver for Giovanni Buitoni, the millionaire president of the eponymous pasta maker. He took it north to the New York School of Embalming and Restorative Arts. His career was enabled by a moment of fortune: a college scholarship from an anonymous donor the year he graduated high school. “There’s a certain type of reverence around the lives of the people in our village, and there’s a respect and a dignity that goes around the preparation of your loved one and their final disposition.”īlack children’s professional aspirations meant little in rural Florida when Hall was growing up. “It’s about care and respect for the people we know, our families,” said Linda Thornton Hillery, a longtime friend whom Hall trained as a mortician in Rochester. That was particularly true in the Jim Crow South, where Black families could not depend on white churches, funeral homes or cemeteries to handle their loved ones’ bodies with respect - or at all. To some, morticians’ work seems ghoulish, but their importance is indisputable at the time of need. “It’s crazy, but that’s what he wanted to do.” “Chickens, frogs, whatever died, he buried it and he had a little funeral service for it,” Singletary said. Instead, Hall said simply, he’d just always wanted to be a funeral director. (Provided photo - Rochester Democrat & Chronicle) Ross, by contrast, weighed about200 pounds and was considerably taller than Woods.Joseph Hall’s funeral Home on West Main Street in downtown Rochester. She said Woods had withered to perhaps 130 pounds and had verylittle hair after chemotherapy. "When you look at pictures of them, you say how could thispossibly be?" said Cheryl Woods, Elizabeth Woods' daughter-in-law. Newsday reported that mourners initially accepted an assistantfuneral director's explanation that death and makeup sometimeschange a body's appearance. "But the oldest daughter stated, 'That is Momma,"' he said,and the family went ahead with the wake and funeral. James, the funeral home's general manager, said that when theRoss family was called in to view the body before holding a wake,one of her children said "That's not Momma." Woods was buried in Ross' grave at the Rose Hill cemetery inLinden, N.J., while Ross' body remained at the funeral home. He said one of his employees mistakenly switched body tags lastweek, misidentifying 70-year-old Elizabeth Woods and 76-year-oldRuth Ross. "This is a terrible mistake," Unity Funeral Chapels' CliffordJames said today. N E W Y O R K, June 12 - Body ID tags were accidentally switched at afuneral home, and one woman wound up being buried in the otherwoman's grave even though at least one relative noticed somethingwas amiss.
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