Louisiana cemetery apologizes for telling family Black deputy couldn't be buried there

The family of a Black sheriff’s deputy in Louisiana said a local cemetery declined to bury his body after he died last week due to a “whites only” policy.

Darrell Semien, an Allen Parish sheriff’s office deputy, died on Sunday at the age of 55. But when his widow Karla went to inquire about his burial at the local Oaklin Springs cemetery, the Semien family said, she was told he couldn’t be buried there.

“I just went to Oaklin Springs cemetery to pick a plot for my husband to be buried . I met with the lady out there and she said she could not sell me a plot because the cemetery is a whites only cemetery,” Semien wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “Wow what a slap in the face.”

Oaklin Springs cemetery confirmed to local station KPLC on Wednesday that a contract from the 1950s mentions “the right of burial of the remains of white human beings”.