Agonistic Homegoing: Frederick Douglass, Joseph Lowery, and the Democratic Value of African American Public Mourning

Abstract

W hat does the furor over the "politicization" of Coretta Scott King's funeral reveal about contemporary black mourning practices? What does it reveal about black political thought, rhetoric, and practice? Identifying two key modes of mourning and their concomitant conceptions of democracy, this article situates the funeral within a tradition of self-consciously political responses to loss that played a significant role in abolitionism and the struggle for civil rights. Tracing the tradition's origins, and employing the speeches of Frederick Douglass as an exemplar, it considers the approach's democratic value and the consequences of its failure. Arguing that the response to the King funeral indicates that the tradition is in decline, the article locates causes of this decline in significant changes among the black population and in the complex consequences of the tradition's previous successes. It concludes by considering the decline's potentially negative impact, both for African Americans and for the broader political community.

Grieving Critically: Barack Obama and the Counter-Eulogy

“…The speeches would honestly acknowledge loss while also aspiring toward more hopeful, promising tomorrows. They would, in short, incorporate “complexity, ambivalence, and the subjunctive mood” and would channel the audience’s collective grief toward an improved future (Stow 2010, 7).…”

“…Black funeral traditions also offered a unique blend of sadness and joy, and though they lamented death and suffering, they gestured toward a better, more hopeful world (168-74). They thus cultivated “an ambivalent and bicameral orientation toward life” (Stow 2010, 3)—one that acknowledged tragedy but, as W.E.B. DuBois (2015, 197) wrote, also “breathe[d] a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things.”…”

“…Like a counter-monument, the speech “demand[s] interaction” (Young 1992, 277) and “foster[s] self-interrogation” (Johnston 2007, 147). And like African American funeral practices, it “challenge[s] those who are living to pick up the mantle and carry on the work” (Stow 2010, 11). It does not urge survivors to be willing, like the fallen, to die for their worthy nation.…”

Bad deaths, good funerals: The values of life insurance in New Orleans

“…For example, in her monograph Passed On , Karla Holloway (, 2) describes twentieth‐century black ways of death, dying, and commemorating and argues that black Americans' “particular vulnerability to an untimely death” intimately affects black culture in general and mourning practices in particular. Holloway (, 185) frames the pomp and circumstance of funerals as “clearly deliberate attempts to make the ‘home‐going’ ceremonies of African Americans underscore or encourage a view of each life as important and notable.” Other scholars have similarly argued that the elaborate funerals and care for the dead traditional in black culture can be seen as posthumous attempts to provide human dignity to those who were denied it in life (Smith ; Stow ). Ambiguously bringing together deep sorrow and joyful celebration, black “home‐goings” give expression to grief over the loss of a loved one while marking the transition of the deceased to a better place free from racialized injustice (Holloway ; Smith ; Stow ).…”

“…Holloway (, 185) frames the pomp and circumstance of funerals as “clearly deliberate attempts to make the ‘home‐going’ ceremonies of African Americans underscore or encourage a view of each life as important and notable.” Other scholars have similarly argued that the elaborate funerals and care for the dead traditional in black culture can be seen as posthumous attempts to provide human dignity to those who were denied it in life (Smith ; Stow ). Ambiguously bringing together deep sorrow and joyful celebration, black “home‐goings” give expression to grief over the loss of a loved one while marking the transition of the deceased to a better place free from racialized injustice (Holloway ; Smith ; Stow ). New Orleans jazz funerals perhaps most strongly embody this significant merging of mourning and rejoicing.…”