Dockery Funeral Home
Introduction
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Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
Dockery Funeral Home serves as a testament to the opportunities afforded African Americans during the era of segregation in the South. Carl Dockery and Sherman Enloe both became some of the earliest business owners in the fledgling Freedmon community of East Shelby in the 1920s and 1930s. Being a mortician was one of the few opportunities afforded African American men during segregation as funeral homes tended to be segregated spaces. Segregation meant that some of the only jobs African Americans could get with a college degree were Clergy, Morticians, and educators. Both Dockery and Enloe were college educated in order to learn the mortician trade.
Sources
Written by Chavis Gash and Zach Dressel
Chavis Gash
Chavis Gash
Cleveland County Historical Collection