COVID-19 upends New Orleans’s African American funeral customs

COVID-19 upends New Orleans’s African American funeral customs

Carol “Baby Doll Kit” Harris holds her granddaughter Ja’Niya Dabney’s hand as she says her final goodbye to her mother, Mary “Grams” Braud Harris (left), and her aunt Clarice “Reecie” Braud Willis (right). The family had to forego the West African–inspired mourning and burial traditions that include a trek to the burial site accompanied by a brass band playing slow, mournful dirges. Such processions are typically teeming with family and friends forming the second-line and holding decorated memorials consisting of fans, umbrellas, corsages, and life-size cutouts of the deceased. Once the body is interred, or “cut loose,” the celebration of life begins as the mourners lift up the spirit of the deceased with high-energy music and fancy dancing known as “footwork.”

Photograph by Kathleen Flynn

2020

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