HOUSTON—The unidentified woman was found on a Waller County road, her dark hair shorn off, a plastic bag taped around her head, her hands severed. She had been strangled and tossed away by her killer.

More than a year later, the crime remains unsolved, the murder victim’s name is still unknown and efforts to bury her have churned controversy in Waller County—a rural area just west of Houston that is long roiled by racial divisions.

The victim is white. The funeral home and cemetery a justice of the peace initially chose to handle her burial in Hempstead are historically black.

But Waller County Commissioners Court balked at paying for that burial. And when activists started raising questions about the county’s hesitation at burying the woman in a black cemetery, the commissioners asked a white-owned funeral home in Waller to handle arrangements—adhering to what community activists say is a long-standing tradition of cemetery segregation in the county.

The victim would be the first known white person buried in a black cemetery in Waller County. Since March 25, Waller County has paid neighboring Harris County $50 a day to store the body.

“It’s clear that when there is a white body and no family members or anyone to claim it, that the authorities will call ... a white funeral home for a white body,” said DeWayne Charleston, the Waller County justice of the peace who first ordered a black funeral home to handle the arrangements for the unidentified victim.

County officials said they requested the change in funeral homes from a different justice of the peace.

“I have never seen such defiance and determination to protect a segregated system,” Charleston said. “I always figured they were upset with me for calling a black funeral home to pick up a white woman.”

Waller County Judge Owen Ralston, the county’s top elected official, denied that racial issues were at play.

“I didn’t know if the victim was black or white, and I didn’t care,” said Ralston.

Rather, he attributed the delay in burial to the black funeral home director’s insistence that the county sign a letter guaranteeing payment. Ralston said that went against county policy, and instead contacted another funeral home to handle the arrangements.

The white-owned funeral home picked up the woman’s body Monday—the same day community activists sent out a news release calling attention to the situation.

That a nameless murder victim’s burial is stirring claims of racial discrimination is not surprising in Waller County. In 2006, the Texas Attorney General investigated claims that the rights of black voters were violated. Earlier this year, students at historically black Prairie View A&M University protested to bring attention to racially-motivated voting problems in Waller County.