For weeks, Marsha Music's Facebook feed has brought a stream of death notices as COVID-19 tears through the black community in her hometown of Detroit.

Music remembers Gloria and Jeffrey enjoying themselves each year at the African World Festival, a celebration of black heritage that draws thousands from across Detroit.

Music says she was blown away by Stoudamire's passion for Detroit, and for giving his fellow black residents a fuller understanding of their importance in African American history.

In Detroit, where there's a rich tradition among African Americans of saying goodbye to the dead, the truncated memorials feel like an added insult to an already beleaguered race, says QuanTez Pressley, lead pastor at Third New Hope Baptist Church, which has lost two members of the congregation to the virus in recent weeks.

As Music reads COVID-19 memorials written by residents in Detroit and in other cities in her state with large black populations such as Flint, she says she's struck by the collective sense of helplessness among loved ones in mourning.