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A homegoing (or home-going) service is an African-American and Black-Canadian Christian funeral tradition marking the going home of the deceased to the Lord or to Heaven.
History
editIn 1803, a slave ship landed in St. Simons Island, Georgia, with captive Africans from Nigeria carrying a cargo of Igbo people. The Igbo people took control of the slave vessel, and when it landed in Georgia many of the Igbos chose suicide than a lifetime in slavery by drowning in the swamp. African Americans in Georgia and in the Gullah Geechee Nation says that when the Igbo people died from suicide their souls flew back to Africa. The location became known as Igbo landing.[1] Also in the Gullah Geechee Nation, the practice of placing seashells on graves is believed to return souls back to Africa, as the sea brought Africans to America on slave ships and the sea will return them back home in Africa when they die.[2] Enslaved and free blacks were not allowed to congregate to perform any kind of ritual for burying their dead because slaveholders feared the slaves would conspire to create an uprising during any such gathering. [3]
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were few, if any black-owned or black-managed funeral homes. Survivors of deceased blacks were forced to depend on white funeral homes for embalming if they would even agree to service them. Jim Crow laws and white bias required blacks to enter these white funeral homes through back doors and basements.[4][5]
References
edit- ^ Powell, Timothy. "Ebos Landing". New Georgia Encyclopedia. University of Georgia Press. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
- ^ National Park Service (2005). Low Country Gullah Culture Special Resource Study and Final Environmental Impact Statement (PDF). NPS South East Regional Office. p. 76.
- ^ Smith, Suzanne (2010). To Serve the Living Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674267442.
- ^ Smith (25 February 2010). To Serve the Living Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674267442.
- ^ "'POV: Homegoings,' TV review". New York Daily News.
- Holloway, Karla. (2003). Passed On: African American Mourning, 3 - 19. USA: Duke University Press.
- The History of African American Funeral Service. (n.d.). Retrieved from Woods-Valentine Mortuary.
- Homegoing Services and the Black Community!. (n.d.). Retrieved from The Old Black Church Blog.
- Marsden, Sara J., Homegoing Funerals: An African American Funeral Tradition. (n.d.). Retrieved from U.S. Funerals.
Further reading
edit- Elaine Nichols (1989). The Last Miles of the Way: African-American Homegoing Traditions, 1890-present : Exhibition Dates, June 4, 1989-December 1, 1989. South Carolina State Museum.
- "When it's all over: African American homegoing celebrations". University of Wisconsin--Madison. 1996.
- https://www.talkdeath.com/7-elements-of-african-american-mourning-practices-burial-traditions/