Urbanism and technology brought profound and far-reaching changes in the manner in which black people in the rural South prepare for and celebrate the funeral ritual. The moment of death, the funeral rituals, and the period of mourning afterwards have all been affected by urbanism. Hard-surfaced roads and the telephone have accelerated the spread of the “bad news.” The automobile has made possible much larger attendance at funerals, and the airplane has dramatically reduced the period of “mourning” for the dead. Perhaps nowhere else have these changes been more evident than in an obscure community in the Cumberland Mountains of middle Tennessee.
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References
1.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, United States Census, 1970.
2.
KollmorgenW. M., The German Swiss in Franklin County, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., p. 19, 1937.
3.
Interview with a black farm owner, December 1974.
4.
Interview with a black farm owner, December 1974.
5.
Interview with a black home owner, December 1974.
6.
BrentM. J.GreeneE. F., Rural Negro Health: A Five Year Experiment in Health Education in Tennessee, issued by the Julius Rosenwald Fund, Southern Office, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, pp. 11–12, 1937.
7.
Interview with the son of a retired minister, December, 1974.
8.
Interview with the community's oldest citizen, Hattie Watkins, December 1974.
9.
Interview with the community's folk historian, December 1974.
10.
Interview with a former employee of the lumber company, March 1977.
11.
Interview with a relative of the funeral director, March 1974.
12.
PerryJ.PerryE., Face to Face: The Individual and Social Problems, Educational Associates, Boston, Massachusetts, p. 518, 1976.
13.
Interview with a former Burial Association member, March 1974.
14.
Interview with the janitor, March 1974.
15.
Interview with a railroad station porter who was one of the few fulltime jobholders in the community throughout the Depression, February 1973.
16.
RayH., “An Economic, Educational, and Social Survey of Franklin County, Tennessee,” unpublished master's thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, p. 69, 1937.
17.
Draft Board Records of Franklin, Lincoln, and Moore counties, Tennessee.
18.
Interview with patient recently discharged from the local county hospital, December 1974.
19.
Interview with an employee of the community's funeral director, April, 1976.
