Final Morticians that Care magazine article

After much debate about what this story is about, this is my final article, an article about three courageous men who work in dangerous neighborhoods, trying to make them safer.

Morticians that Care

By Alexandra Zendrian

(2015 words)

On a hectic corner in west Philadelphia, a curve that typically hosts vendors selling sunglasses and children running around in the closest play area that they have, three white body bags and an opened taupe coffin overtook their playground.

At this busy intersection, three morticians were preaching to anyone who would listen as trolleys rolled by and locals gathered to chat.

Shaheed Luqman began, “No matter where you go anywhere in America, you will find that the death rate is rising. In Philadelphia, the murder rate is rising and rising. In Newark, New Jersey, the murder rate is rising and rising… what we gonna do about it?.. Who’s gonna save us but us?”

This intersection of Germantown and Eerie Avenues hosted more than just playful children and local vendors; it has also garnered its share of Philadelphia’s violence. There were 406 murders in Philadelphia in 2006 according to the Philadelphia police department. That number for this year is already up 17 percent.

Debbie Ingersoll, who works at The Eagle Bar sandwich shop on this corner, lost her then 24-year-old son, Mikal, two years ago to random gang violence in Philadelphia. When the Morticians that Care pulled up in their brightly colored green and white van, complete with silver coffin asfixed to the top, she encouraged the group to work in front of her shop.

So the three black men who make up the Morticians That Care, Luqman, Rasheed Reece and Tyrone Muhammad, looked at each other inside The Eagle Bar sandwich shop and nodded to each other, noting that they need to go where the people need them.

The Morticians that Care, a three man advocacy group against black violence, go out into these affected communities, now about once a week, with their coffin and body bags as well as two tags, like the ones used to identify corpses but magnified 100 times, that say, “Wake Up Black Man” and “How Many Body Bags Will It Take”.

The threesome were passing out flyers about sexually transmitted diseases and gun violence to anyone who would take them. The flyer created by the Morticians that Care said, “Over 40,000 black men murdered over the past five years. We’re becoming extinct. How many body bags will it take? How many more funerals and wakes? How many more black men will have to die? How many more black families will have to cry?”

They got to work, unloading their white body bags filled with newspapers and speakers blasting rap music about the growing HIV rate, increase in teen pregnancies and acceptance of gang violence and why that culture should change.

The three morticians, united by death, go out into black communities, primarily near Newark where they are based, to talk about what they see as the ills in the black community and why they need to change. But the group hopes to travel even further than Pennsylvania, realizing that there are other cities like Baltimore that are facing a similar fate.

While in Philadelphia, Reece reminded Luqman that a mortician “is anyone who deals with the dead.” While Luqman is not a mortician like Muhammad, who works for Peace and Glory Funeral Home in Newark, or a coffin maker like Reece, who has been making caskets for Sunnah Caskets for two years since his brother was murdered, Luqman may still be a mortician as he now enters communities to speak against death. This was enough for one mortician to dub him with that same title.

Morticians that Care was started by Muhammad in 2004 after he worked on Amir Wilkins, an 18-year-old who was shot in the back of the head in a car with a group of friends. He could not reconcile this young man’s last few moments, in a car with his friends, clueless as to what would happen to him. After working on Wilkins, Muhammad felt the need to stop this senseless violence. At that point, he asked God what he could do; this was the response he got.

“God wanted us to do this work,” Muhammad explained. “It’s not gonna be an easy fight but you have to stay at it.”

Muhammad feels that he has keep trying to reach the black community because almost no one else will. He thinks that many of the priests, community officials and celebrities have failed these young black men. Muhammad considers himself the heart of his community in Jersey City and Newark and he knows that when a person’s heart stops, it’s all over. Therefore Muhammad feels that he cannot stop.

That’s why Muhammad goes into middle schools, like his 16-year-old daughter Trinity’s, to speak to the crowd that he feels is most affected by this violence.

He is also working on writing a play with a Newark priest, Pastor Clark, called “At the End of the Day” which will include four caskets, with four people in those caskets, who will each explain why they are in that predicament.

Though Trinity entertains the idea of being a funeral director like her father, when Muhammad suggests that he comes to her school, she responds in typical teenage fashion by saying, “Dad you’re embarrassing me.” She is particularly embarrassed by the van that her father uses for his activist group with the coffin on top of it.

While Muhammad is proud of the van that he helped design, which he financed through a $15,000 loan, he is also worried about the attention that it may draw toward his family.

Every night when Muhammad parks the van in his Jersey City driveway, he looks in the rear view mirror and turns around, cautiously checking that no one has followed him home. Last year 96 people were murdered in Newark and Muhammad has buried all too many black men who became targets of gun violence either accidentally or on purpose. Muhammad knows that while he is out preaching against gun violence he could be shot, to make him an example to the surrounding community, but he hopes that this fate will not trickle down to his wife or daughter.

When asked about why Muhammad would want to possibly put himself out of business by discouraging gang violence, he shakes his head back and forth with disapproval, seeing that people don’t understand that his work goes beyond the funeral home.

“It’s so much deeper than funerals,” Muhammad said. “One day, it’s gonna be you.”

Muhammad knows that if someone does not stop this violent epidemic, perhaps he could be the next target.

“Our future generation, a generation that should be doing better than we are, is dropping in the streets,” Luqman said on the corner while people brushed past. “Where’s the outrage? Where’s the news media about this?.. We are going backwards in time. Stand up and take control of your destiny. Stand up and take control of your neighborhood.”

While Luqman was speaking on the street corner, surrounded by drug stores and other small businesses, some people stopped, including two men who told their respective sons to heed this group’s message, while others simply gazed from the speaker to the display and back again and then walked by.

As soon as the casket containing a white body bag stuffed with newspaper was opened, people began flocking toward the street corner, wondering what kind of craziness had now overtaken their street corner. There was a mixture of pure curiosity and disbelief with an air of gratitude and a slight mix of anger.

“We hate our own people, we dislike our own people; how is that?,” Reece said, yelling to the people waiting outside a pharmacy across the street. “It’s time to wake up. It’s time to get your life together. I was there. I was there. I was up on the streets. Let me give you a little history. I used to rob banks. I used to sell drugs. But it ain’t about who I used to be; it’s about who I am today. This is why I’m bringing attention to the streets because change can come.”

“Don’t worry about somebody gonna laugh you up, you gotta be about change,” Luqman said. “You gonna live your life hiding, you gonna live your life just going with the flow or you gonna let your life stand for something.”

Gordon Fletcher, a 62-year-old Philadelphian, was driving toward a store when he saw the display and these three men, stopped his car, and proceeded to walk toward the sandwich shop, intently listening and nodding his head.

“He’s saying what I’ve been saying for years,” Fletcher said of Reece.

Fletcher was appreciative that these men were out here speaking and hopes that people are taking in their message.

“People have got to stop long enough to hear what they’re saying,” Fletcher added.

“Those who want to hear, hear,” Muhammad said.

“You can lead them to the water but you can’t make them drink,” Reece added.

“Its seems like the value on young black men, there is no value on them,” Muhammad said. “It’s very frustrating… they don’t see it, the value.”

Muhammad is increasingly frustrated as a week after the event in Philadelphia he is at it again, working with a victim of violence, Travis.

Nineteen-year-old Travis McGovern was shot four times, three times in the abdomen and one bullet is lodged in his cheek. While Muhammad is working on preserving his small, 5’4” chocolate brown body for Travis’ viewing, he doesn’t need the autopsy report to know that this young man probably died as a result of gun violence. He’s seen it all before, a black teenager or man in his twenties, loaded up with bullets. And as he gingerly removes the stray bullet from Travis’ cheek, in a cold, sterile, clinical room in the basement of Peace and Glory Funeral Home, Muhammad can’t help but wish that he was in this room working with someone who died of natural causes.

“It really sucks,” Muhammad said. “The reason that it sucks is because this type of behavior [gang violence] is being congratulated. They think if you die young, you get some kind of reward in the community… (I’m) tired of burying these young black men,” Muhammad said.

The Morticians That Care were preaching and handing out flyers in Philadelphia on that corner for almost two hours. About 60 people stopped what they were doing to listen to what these three men had to say. The group then packed up their van with some help from onlookers to Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On?’”.

When the three men got into their van, headed back home to Newark, they were electrified by the number of people who did stop, converse and take their flyers. They were more struck by the number of people who wanted them to come back and start their own Philadelphia chapter.

While Muhammad was driving, the three men recounted tales of the people that they met and talked with and the enthusiasm that those people had for what these men were doing.

“Did you see that man who came up to Rasheed,” Luqman said to Muhammad of the tall, black man who looked particularly disgruntled. “I thought we were going to have a problem but then he just took the flyer and shook his hand.”

Reece smiled, acknowledging that he was a little worried as well but was thrilled that the man was interested in what they were doing.

“A few people stopped me and said that we should start something down in Philly,” Luqman said. “I encouraged them to start their own group and one man said that he wasn’t sure that Philly was ready for that yet. So I told him, ‘As long as you need us to come here, we’ll come.’”

As they were driving back to Newark in their van, they stopped at a street corner where the people in the car next to them were taking pictures of the van. Reece and Luqman got out of the car and posed next to the van, beaming after a long but fulfilling day’s work.

~ by anz203 on December 7, 2007.