Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death

To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death with Suzanne E. Smith

Suzanne E. Smith is Professor of History in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University.  Her first book, Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit (2000), examines Motown and its relationship to the black community of Detroit and the civil rights movement.  It was awarded third in the eleventh annual Gleason Music Book Awards, sponsored by NYU, Rolling Stone, and BMI.  Her latest book, To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death (2010), explores the role of funeral directors in African American life and their participation in the national civil rights movement.  To Serve the Living was a finalist for the Library of Virginia's Non-Fiction Literary Award in 2011.  Her current book project is a biography of the African American radio evangelist, Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux.