Translate
Milton V. Price and Bernice K. Price v. Evergreen Cemetery Company of Seattle - Notable case from 1953
A case of (at the time) legal racial discrimination. Over 60 years later, the case was finally overruled, recognizing the role of the legal system in "devaluing Black lives."
Case citation: No. 513159 (Wash. Super. Ct. King Cty. 1957)
The case
In 1953, Milton Price, Jr. died at age 3 in a swimming pool in Seattle’s Leschi neighborhood. Milton’s grieving mother phoned what is today Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery. She asked if they had a plot available in Babyland, an area set aside to bury children. She was told a plot was available.
When Mrs. Price, a Black woman, later arrived in person, she was told that Babyland was restricted to Caucasians. This meant Milton could not be buried there.
The Price family sued the cemetery for refusing to bury young Milton. The case was tried to a jury before King County Superior Court Judge William J. Wilkins. The jury returned a verdict for the cemetery. The Price family appealed.
Appeal opinion and racial animus
On appeal, the Washington Supreme Court affirmed the trial court.
Concurring in the Court’s opinion, Justice Joseph A. Mallery made no attempt to hide his racial animus (specific, discriminatory intent). He worried that allowing a Black child to be buried in Babyland would compromise the cemetery’s “white exclusiveness." He accused the Price family of engaging in a “crusade to judicially deprive white people of their right to choose their associates in their private affairs.”
Recognizing the courts’ role in devaluing Black lives
In 2020, more than 60 years after the initial case...in a letter to the judiciary and legal community, the Washington Supreme Court said that, “[a]s judges, we must recognize the role we have played in devaluing black lives,” adding, “[t]his very court once held that a cemetery could lawfully deny grieving black parents the right to bury their infant.”
Later in 2020, the Washington Supreme Court specifically overruled its holding in the Price case.
Milton’s mother, Bernice Price, died in 2021, but lived long enough to see the Supreme Court overrule its earlier holding.