At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as hospitals facilitated goodbyes over iPads and funeral homes buried dead without services, families were left with a uniquely isolating grief, devoid of the rituals that traditionally surround death.

For Black Americans, who were 1.9 times more likely than white Americans to die of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic, this stifled grief fits into a long history of unacknowledged pain. Dating back to slavery, when scientific journals claimed that Black people had higher pain tolerances, to now, as the maternal mortality rate for Black women is 2.9 times that of white women, Black Americans have long faced medical discrimination. The pandemic—and the racial justice reckoning that erupted after the death of George Floy…