Friday, July 4, 2008

Now for something TOTALLY random

The New York Times needed me to handle, from afar, this very strange to-do in the Houston area involving the corpse of an unidentified white murder victim and efforts by black activists to use her to desegregate a racially divided county's cemeteries.

Here's the piece I did, which appears in Saturday's newspaper.

Until this popped up, I had absolutely never thought about the question of segregation in cemeteries. Had you?
Posted by THE STRIP PODCAST at 6:37 PM
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

did you enjoy that?

July 5, 2008 at 3:22 AM
Anonymous said...

My fathers story of racial enlightenment is from this subject. During WWII, around age 15, he read a news story about a controversy back east where they wanted to bury an American Indian soldier in the colored section. He thought to himself "That's stupid, everyone knows Indians are buried with whites. Hey- why do we segregate at all?"
I know at Fort Reno, just west of OKC, the German and Italian POW's who died during their incarceration there are buried in a sperate section, just over the west wall of the main cemetary. Jeff in OKC

July 5, 2008 at 1:02 PM
Anonymous said...

Growing up in the South, I used to hear folks refer to the "black cemetery" or the "colored cemetery, which is where you went if you died at the "colored hospital"...

July 5, 2008 at 10:55 PM
Anonymous said...

At the Ft. Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio the German POWs are buried with the US veterans. Some of the German graves have swastikas on them.

July 6, 2008 at 2:31 PM
THE STRIP PODCAST said...

Hey Poker CLub - yes, I did enjoy the utter randomness of the story and also the fact that it was something I didn't ever consider before. Possibly, that is because I always figured I'd be buried in a Jewish cemetery anyway. But thanks for asking. Interesting comments, everyone.

July 7, 2008 at 1:39 AM

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