After a cemetery in Louisana denied burial to Black sheriff’s deputy, the board of the cemetery held an emergency meeting on Thursday to remove its whites-only provision from its sales contracts, reports news agency Associated Press. 

Creig Vizena, Board president for Oaklin Springs Cemetery in southwest Louisiana, told AP that he was ashamed to learn that on Tuesday the family of Darrell Semien, Allen Parish Sherriff who died on Sunday aged 55, could not bury him at the cemetery because he was American American. 

“It’s horrible,” Creig told the news agency, adding that he was relieved when the board meeting was over, “it was like a weight lifted off of me.”

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The board members removed the word “white” from a contract stipulation, Creig said, adding that it conveyed  “the right of burial of the remains of white human beings,” quoted AP. 

On Tuesday, Oberlin’s Karla Semien on Facebook wrote that a woman told her she could not bury her husband at the cemetery as it was only for whites. “I just can’t believe in 2021 in oberlin Louisiana this is happening,” Semien wrote.

“To be told this is like we were nothing. He (Sherrif) was nothing? He put his life on the line for them,” the woman told KPLC-TV on Wednesday.

Sheriff’s daughter Shayla Semien told KATC-TV, “He was a police officer in this same community for 15 years. He was denied a place to lay because of the color of his skin.”

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Creig told AP that the offensive wording was used in the sales contacts since the cemetery was in the last 1950s and was not in the cemetery association’s bylaws. 

He said that he got to know about burial rejection when a deputy, who knows Semien, called him. The cemetery board president said he apologised to Semien’s family and offered them one of his own plots in the cemetery, which was according to his estimated less than two acres. He added that the Sheriff’s family turned down the offer saying Semien couldn’t rest there easily.

Creig said that the incident is “a stain” that is gonna stay on the cemetery and their community. Although, he told AP, he thinks his grandchildren will be able to say,  “Hey, my pawpaw fixed that.”