The last thirty years has brought drastic and healthy changes in the convention of mourning in America. We no longer feel that it is necessary to express our grief with black crepe or veils, or to impose these symbols of our mourning on others. Most of us feel, rather, that grief for our dead is a private thing to be held and dealt with in our own hearts.
I found this quotation a bit clueless when I read it in 1956 book entitled Etiquette: The Complete Modern Guide of Day-to-Day Living the Correct Way by Frances Benton. Clueless because it implies that people of earlier decades who signaled that they mourned by wearing black somehow were not holding grief and dealing with grief in their own hearts. There is an unattractively smug presumption of greater honesty of feeling over the mourners of past eras.
Admittedly, I can see how some elaborate Victorian conventions of mourning--such as what exactly to wear at which exact month after the death of which particular relative--were an imposition. In fact, running out of black fabric and clothing was a problem during wartime. But signalling mourning through clothing was also a means of cautioning the world that didn’t know you well to take some extra care when dealing with you. And I can see much good and little harm in that.