Freedom Fighters [Calendar title]

Ruston, Louisiana: Modern Disciples of Love and King's Funeral Home, 1968. Very good. 11" x 7¾". Two color double-sided leaves, adhered at top edge with hole for hanging. Pp. [4]. Very good: faint stains to background of one image and a few light creases and scuffs, else fresh and bright.

This is a rare and beautiful wall calendar celebrating four civil rights leaders, all of whom had been murdered. It was issued by a long-standing African Americanowned funeral home in Louisiana, founded and run at the time by an enterprising educator and community leader, Buena King.

A 1977 feature in the Ruston Daily Leader offered a wealth of background on the impressive "Buena King - Businesswoman." Reared in East Texas and one of six children, she started domestic duties at an early age and put herself through college by supervising campus residential buildings. In 1926 she was hired to teach at a Black school in Ruston, Louisiana; she also established the library and science department, instigated fundraising for the auditorium, served as assistant principal and coach of the girls' basketball team. "During the Panic of 1932, when banks and businesses were failing because of the scarcity of money, Mrs. King pooled the family's funds and established a burial club." In 1960 she retired from teaching to work the funeral home full-time with her husband, and when he died in 1968 she "assumed full responsibility for the business." She was "the only female member of the Interracial Committee" in Ruston and worked to open roads, a park and swimming pool for Black residents. She was also active with the local voters league, NAACP and Chamber of Commerce, and served on the Board of Directors for the State and National Funeral Directors and Morticians Associations. King's Funeral Home, per their website, has been offering "personalized funeral services since 1932." The business is now run by W.D. McKeever, who "was fortunate to receive the majority of his training from the late Buena E. King. She passed on to him her passion for the customer."

This beautiful calendar shows the dates for three months of 1969 to each of four pages and advertises King's Funeral Home: "Quality (We Have It) - Service (We Give It) - Satisfaction (We Guarantee It)." Each page also has a photographic image of a civil rights leader who met an untimely demise: John F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers, Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rare and beautiful promotion for a funeral home run by an ambitious African American woman in Louisiana. No evidence of this calendar was found in OCLC or online.