Nathan Rhambo
Nathan Rhambo was a handsome man, known also for his manners and good taste. Perhaps that’s why as a young man he was singled out to be the protégé of William M. Tears, one of the most successful black undertakers in the entire South. While others who carried the name Rhambo at the turn of the century were typically porters, coachmen, and yardmen, Nathan Rhambo went by the much finer title of embalmer, a profession in those days esteemed nearly as highly as law and medicine.
Though Rhambo still suffered the ignominy of the lowercase “c” (for “colored”) following his name in the city directory, he didn’t let that get in the way of making money. Austin’s race relations, like those of any other Southern city, were stunted under Jim Crow, but the city was relatively free of lynch mobs, like the one in Missouri that dragged a black man accused of assaulting a white girl from a county jail and burned him in the town square in 1932.
When Rhambo went to work for Tears, in 1901, black businesses were thriving in the east end of downtown, and Rhambo soon took his place as one of the foremost funeral directors in the black community. He cultivated a genteel interest in hunting, an interest that in those days could only have been indulged by a few black men, in whose hands the sight of a gun wouldn’t bring policemen down like crows. He married, was a member of Third (now Ebenezer) Baptist Church, and had a reputation as “perfectly sober — never smokes, drinks, or chews.” On the other hand, Rhambo wasn’t shy about flaunting his wealth. After his murder, the Statesman reported that he was reputed to carry around large sums of money.
Rhambo left Tears’ establishment and opened his own funeral home sometime between 1915 and 1920. The business thrived, and by 1929 Rhambo’s funeral home was one of the few listed in bold type in the city directory, advertising “Superior Ambulance Service” and “Courteous Attendants.”
But on the night of June 21, 1932, Rhambo saw his last customer. A young man dressed in a gray suit and Panama hat called upon him and asked the 55-year-old funeral director to escort him north of town to fetch a recently deceased relative. The two left in Rhambo’s black Buick sedan, and that was the last time Rhambo was seen alive.
He was found early the next morning in his car by the side of the road near Dawson, about 130 miles from Austin, shot through the head and severely beaten. Within 24 hours, state Rangers had a suspect in custody: Carl Stewart, identified by employees at the Rhambo funeral home as the man who called on Rhambo the night of his death. Police also arrested two of Rhambo’s employees, saying the three men conspired to rob the wealthy man — though a detail that slipped into the newspaper was that Rhambo was still wearing a diamond ring on his finger when he was found. Since Rhambo was a prominent black businessman, the circumstances of his death were reported in the papers, but he received no obituary in the paper, not even a funeral announcement.
