In life and death, Black-owned Bell Funeral Home has been a pillar of South Providence

PROVIDENCE — At the corner of Broad Street and Dartmouth Avenue, the Bell Funeral Home is a stately presence in busy South Providence. It has played silent witness for decades to family tragedies and loved ones moving on as thousands of Rhode Islanders have filed through its doors. 

For Keith Stokes, Bell Funeral Home stands as testament to its founder, Andrew J. Bell Jr., and the survival of one of the state’s most enduring Black-owned businesses.

“For me, to see the Bell Funeral Home still standing with all these changes going on, it gives a sense of history, a sense of permanency,” said Stokes, a historian and the city’s business and development director.

Built in 1888 for wealthy merchant and grocer Israel B. Mason, the 2½-story home is remarkable in its intricate details and ranks as one of the city’s best examples of Queen Anne Victorian architecture. For more than a century, it has operated as a funeral home, with Bell buying the site in 1960 and running the business until the Cardoza family took over in 1974. Today, it is owned by Christine Cardoza, who grew up in the home and worked with her father running the business, starting at age 13.

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“I feel sometimes God just chooses you to do what you do," Cardoza said. "I’ve dedicated my life to this craft. It’s been extremely gratifying.” 

Cardoza is carrying on a tradition handed down in her family through generations, beginning with her great-grandfather John F. Lopez Jr. The son of immigrants from Cape Verde, Lopez ran a successful funeral business, the Lopez Funeral Chapel, at 445 Wickenden St. in the city's Fox Point neighborhood, for years.

Christine’s father, John F. Cardoza, worked with Bell, learning the business from the ground up. He did everything from cleaning the toilets to ushering visitors in after being hired by Bell as an apprentice funeral director and embalmer, Cardoza says.

“He loved helping people,” Cardoza says of her father, who died in 2017.

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The elder Cardoza’s expertise was shaped by Bell, who first opened Bell Funeral Home in a storefront on Westminster Street in Providence in 1932.

Long tradition of social justice activism  

Like Cardoza’s grandfather, Lopez, Bell established himself not only as a successful businessman, but as a civil-rights advocate and activist. Both were early leaders in the Providence branch of the NAACP and the Urban League of Rhode Island.

Lopez served as the local NAACP president and chief spokesman during the World War II era, while Bell founded and led the Urban League. 

Together, they demanded that the Providence Housing Authority adopt anti-discrimination policies, according to a “A Matter of Truth,”a report for the city’s Reparations Commission. Lopez, too, fought to advance fair employment laws in Rhode Island, work that Stokes says set the stage for other Cape Verdean social justice and political leaders, such as George Lima, Isadore Ramos and Clifford Montiero.

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“They were giants as civil-rights leaders in the city and the state,” Stokes says. 

Like many civil-rights leaders of the time, Lopez and Bell were also entrepreneurs who reinvested their profits in social justice causes, Stokes says. Funeral homes were one of three industries in which Black business owners could thrive, besides barbershops and hair salons and dressmaking, he said. 

“You certainly could provide a very important service to the community," Stokes said. "It transcends discrimination. We all need a funeral director someday.”

Early success story for Black-owned businesses

Funeral homes were among the first family businesses established by African Americans after the abolition of slavery. They functioned as cultural institutions as much as businesses, carrying on traditions rooted in African American heritage surrounding death, according to the Library of Congress. 

“These are businesses of necessity, because of racism and segregation through the mid-20th century,” said Jim Vincent, president of the Providence branch of the NAACP. “Black-owned funeral homes have been a major part of the Black community from the beginning.”

In Rhode Island, many enslaved Africans who arrived in Colonial America originated along the Gold Coast, today’s Ghana, Stokes said. They brought not only their labor, but their religious and cultural customs, including funeral rituals that express feelings of sorrow and loss, as well as emphasize the belief that death is not the end of a person’s existence. 

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The funeral commemorates the passing of the person’s soul to the ancestral world while their spirit continues to influence the lives of loved ones, he said.

An 'advocate' for the deceased, a comforter for the community

The Bell Funeral Home has played an important role in the community. The staff of eight has tended to victims of shootings, car crashes and suicides, as well as those who died due to old age or complications of COVID. It has been the scene of high-profile services, such as calling hours for Jennifer Rivera, the 15-year-old witness killed in 2000 just hours before she was to testify at a murder trial. 

“When you come to me, it’s the worst time. Every death is a tragedy,” said Cardoza, who has run Bell Funeral Home since 2010 and is the only licensed female African American funeral director in the state. “Some people really need guidance to work through what they need to do. I think you need to have empathy with everybody.”

While each death imparts trauma, suicide stands out to Cardoza as the worst, for the guilt and judgment that linger. 

“It has so many extra layers,” she said.

Cardoza views every death as unique, taking care with hair and makeup and cleaning fingernails. An elderly woman’s body lay in a casket during a recent interview, her hair curled perfectly in preparation for services in the days to come.

“I was taught those things are very important,” Cardoza, 48, says. “I am the one who protects the deceased when they can’t protect themselves. I’m their advocate.”

Serving a multicultural clientele in South Providence

The funeral home caters to the entire South Providence community, meeting the needs of Laotian, Hmong, Buddhist and Muslim mourners alike, she said. She handles about 300 deaths a year.

According to the Library of Congress, the annual revenue of the funeral industry in the United States was about $14.2 billion in 2016, generated by 15,818 funeral homes, crematoriums, cemeteries and others in the industry. About 1,200 of these funeral homes are family-owned African American independent businesses, according to the 2021 report "Honoring African Americans: Celebrating Life in Death — African American Funeral Homes."

Cardoza acknowledges her unusual career in a field that’s dominated by men. She’s effectively on call all day, every day, she says.

“This is a very demanding job. You have to be a perfectionist with a funeral. You never get to do it over,” Cardoza said. Her mother, 80-year-old Beverly A. Cardoza, helps her in the background.

For Vincent, of the NAACP, the business remains a symbol of perseverance, Black entrepreneurship and Black pride, one of the state's and the nation’s iconic funeral homes.

“Bell has withstood the test of time,” Vincent said. “It is indisputable the role it plays in the Black community.”