Joseph E. Hall, mortician who buried Malcolm X, dies at 91

Feb 23, 2023

The funeral of Malcolm X. Joseph Hall is standing front.(Provided photo — Rochester Democrat & Chronicle)

In his nine years at Unity Funeral Home, Joseph E. Hall had seen just about everything a funeral director might see.

Natural deaths and unnatural ones. Simple preparations and lavish affairs. Solitary deaths that went nearly unnoticed and explosions of grief that reverberated throughout the Black community in Harlem and beyond.

He’d seen almost everything, and yet nothing could have prepared Hall for the call he received late Feb. 21, 1965: Malcolm X had been assassinated, and it was his responsibility to conduct the funeral.

It was an extraordinary job, and so it was fitting that it fell to Hall, who died in December at age 91. For nearly 50 years, he was a mortician in Rochester, with most of that time spent at the West Main Street funeral home that bears his name.

"Literally he buried half of Rochester," said Teresa Singletary, his stepdaughter.

Rochester funeral director Joseph Hall.(Provided photo — Rochester Democrat & Chronicle)

Malcolm X was the most prominent person Hall ever buried, but to call it a career-defining moment would be going too far, Hall's friends and family said.

Preparing the body with skill; treating the survivors with empathy and professionalism; taking care of logistical points to make room for mourning; doing it thousands of times, over and over. That was the definition of his career.

"People knew it wasn't just a job for him," Singletary said. "He had love and compassion for people at the most difficult time of their lives and he wanted to see them through. It didn't matter whether it was Malcolm X or Joe Schmo off the street, he was there to help you."

The first corpse Joseph Hall ever prepared was probably some luckless lizard that expired under the hot sun in Crescent City, Florida.

Hall was born in 1931 in Valdosta, Georgia, but grew up in Crescent City, halfway between Jacksonville and Orlando. His father sometimes drove a hearse, but as an adult Hall denied that was his inspiration.

Joseph Hall's funeral Home on West Main Street in downtown Rochester.(Provided photo — Rochester Democrat & Chronicle)

Instead, Hall said simply, he’d just always wanted to be a funeral director.

"Chickens, frogs, whatever died, he buried it and he had a little funeral service for it," Singletary said. "It's crazy, but that's what he wanted to do."

To some, morticians’ work seems ghoulish, but their importance is indisputable at the time of need. That was particularly true in the Jim Crow South, where Black families could not depend on white churches, funeral homes or cemeteries to handle their loved ones’ bodies with respect — or at all.

"It's about care and respect for the people we know, our families," said Linda Thornton Hillery, a longtime friend whom Hall trained as a mortician in Rochester. "There's a certain type of reverence around the lives of the people in our village, and there's a respect and a dignity that goes around the preparation of your loved one and their final disposition."

Black children's professional aspirations meant little in rural Florida when Hall was growing up. His career was enabled by a moment of fortune: a college scholarship from an anonymous donor the year he graduated high school. He took it north to the New York School of Embalming and Restorative Arts.

While studying he worked as a driver for Giovanni Buitoni, the millionaire president of the eponymous pasta maker. In that role, Hall met Marilyn Monroe and Thurgood Marshall, among others.

Hall graduated in 1956 and took a job at Unity Funeral Home, a Black establishment on Eighth Avenue in Harlem. Unity had been founded a few years earlier by C.B. Powell, publisher of the Amsterdam News, a Black New York newspaper, and one of the most successful Black entrepreneurs of his era.

Unity quickly gained a strong reputation. Among the notable Harlemites to mourn there was Malcolm X, who conducted services at Unity on several occasions for Black Muslims. After his assassination on Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X himself would receive one of the most memorable funerals Harlem had ever seen.

Malcolm X's killing at the hands of his former Nation of Islam acolytes was shocking but not surprising; his house had been firebombed a few weeks earlier. For Hall, the assignment was difficult in more ways than one.

From a physical perspective, the Muslim leader's body had been torn up by bullets — a dozen wounds from the initial shotgun blast that killed him, then many more from a flurry of handgun shots.

"Several of the Muslim brothers wanted to remove Malcolm's suit and put (traditional burial garments) on him," Hall said in a 1982 interview with about…time magazine. "I would not allow that to happen. There was so much damage to the body from the gunfire that I didn't think it appropriate for anyone other than myself or the staff to see."

More broadly, the extreme tension following the assassination dominated the funeral proceedings. Death threats poured in; initially it was difficult to find a church willing to hold the ceremony, so great was the concern about a bombing or shooting.

One anonymous caller made an ominous promise: "Malcolm X's body will never be buried. It will be cremated by fire bombs." Police flooded the block, using a garage in the funeral home to sequester the floral arrangements and search them for explosives.

Nonetheless, Hall disavowed any particular significance. "To me this is just another funeral," he told reporters at the time. "It's my job."

He helped Malcolm's widow, Betty Shabazz, select a $2,000 wrought copper casket with egg-shell velvet lining, then laid a sheet of protective glass over the top of it in anticipation of the thousands who would file by to pay their respects.

The funeral was extraordinary until the very end. After Malcolm had been lowered into the ground at Ferncliff Cemetery, his followers refused to let white gravediggers toss dirt onto his casket. Instead they took the shovels in hand and did the job themselves, despite Hall's pleading with them to leave.

"That was a point of pride to have been the person to prepare Malcolm's body," Thornton Hillery said. "Malcolm was such an important person at the time for Black folks, so for him to have been a part of that — he was quite proud."

And yet, though he spoke about it on occasion to friends, Hall never attempted to gain notoriety from his experience or trade on Malcolm X's name. In fact, he seldom mentioned it at all.

"I can't recall him telling people about it," said George Dailey, his pastor at Prayer House Church of God By Faith in Rochester and a close friend for half a century. "That's just who he was. He didn't do a whole lot of talking."

In 1972, Hall was recruited to Rochester by Andrew Langston, founder of WDKX-FM, and Herbert Thornton, another well known Black businessman. They were starting a funeral home on Genesee Street and needed a director.

He worked there for 10 years before opening his own business, Joseph E. Hall Funeral Home in the Bull's Head neighborhood. For the rest of his life, he settled into a familiar routine: work, church, then back to work.

Every now and then he might take his children swimming at Genesee Valley Park or for a frozen custard at Abbott's in Charlotte. But his job was his true passion.

"There was nothing else he ever wanted to do," said Thornton Hillery, Herbert Thornton's daughter. "All his life was committed to the funeral business, 24 hours a day, or his church."

Hall was known as a skillful embalmer and preparer, making bodies look as lifelike as possible. He ran his business with precision and expected perfection from those around him.

"He was a no-nonsense, by-the-book kind of guy," said Willie Lightfoot, the current pastor of Prayer House Church of God By Faith and a member of Rochester City Council. "He was about his business."

A stern exterior, though, masked Hall's deep care for the community. Singletary recalled that he kept a tab open at the nearby Critic's Restaurant for two homeless men who panhandled in the area. He performed funeral services for countless people who couldn't afford to pay — countless, because he seldom told anyone about it.

"I’ve seen him help a whole lot of folks, and I ain't talking about one or two," Dailey said. "It didn't matter who it was — Brother Hall reached out to help anyone he could."

Hall died Dec. 5, 2022, after a long period of illness. He is survived by his wife, Edith, as well as four stepchildren, two sisters and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Two sons and a stepson predeceased him.

The future of the funeral home that Hall founded is uncertain, Singletary said. His legacy is not.

In a letter of condolence, Mayor Malik Evans noted that Hall had buried both of his parents and called him "a true pillar of our community."

"He was a role model for me and many others, rooted in his community, active in his church and dedicated to his people," Evans wrote. "He treated everyone with dignity. … I know he will not be forgotten, certainly not by me."

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