The board of a cemetery in the U.S. state of Louisiana that denied burial to a black sheriff's deputy met Thursday to remove a whites-only provision from its sales contracts.
Board President H. Creig Vizena said he was stunned and ashamed to learn that the family of Allen Parish Sheriff's Deputy Darrell Semien, who died Sunday, had been told that he could not be buried at the Oaklin Springs Cemetery near Oberlin in southwest Louisiana because he was African American.
"It’s horrible,” Vizena told The Associated Press (AP). He said the board members were meeting for the express purpose of removing "white” from a contract stipulation that the cemetery is for "the remains of white human beings.”
Karla Semien of Oberlin wrote Tuesday on Facebook that a woman at the cemetery had told her that her husband could not be buried there because it was for whites only.
"She stood in front of me and all my kids wow what a slap in the face. I just can’t believe in 2021 in oberlin Louisiana this is happening,” Semien wrote.
"To be told this is like we were nothing. He was nothing? He put his life on the line for them,” Semien told KPLC-TV on Wednesday. She did not immediately respond to a Facebook message from the AP requesting comment.
Vizena said when he told other board members about the language, each one said it had to be fixed.
The offensive wording wasn't in the cemetery association's bylaws but only in sales contracts used since the cemetery was created in the late 1950s, Vizena said.
People tend to sign such things without reading, he said.
He said his 81-year-old aunt was the woman who told the family, and she was "relieved of her duties."
Vizena said he was on his way home from work Tuesday when a deputy who had known Semien called to tell him about the rejection. Vizena said he apologized to the family and offered one of his own plots in the small cemetery, which he estimated covers less than 2 acres (0.8 hectares). But, he said, the offer was turned down: The family said Semien, who was 55, couldn't rest easily there.
"My dad wasn’t any man; he was a phenomenal man,” daughter Shayla Semien told KATC-TV. "He was a police officer in this same community for 15 years. He was denied a place to lay because of the color of his skin.”
Vizena said he believes Oaklin is not the only cemetery with such segregationist holdovers. Cemetery associations throughout the South and the United States should check their bylaws and contracts for such language.
"It's a stain that's going to be on our cemetery and our community for a long time. But we're going to fix it,” he said.
