We Did It, They Hid It: How Memorial Day Was Stripped Of Its African American Roots

[KamaAina]

https://blackthen.com/we-did-it-they-hid-it-how-memorial-day-was-stripped-of-its-african-american-roots/

What we now know as Memorial Day began as “Decoration Day” in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. It was a tradition initiated by former slaves to celebrate emancipation and commemorate those who died for that cause.

These days, Memorial Day is arranged as a day “without politics”—a general patriotic celebration of all soldiers and veterans, regardless of the nature of the wars in which they participated. This is the opposite of how the day emerged, with explicitly partisan motivations, to celebrate those who fought for justice and liberation.

The concept that the population must “remember the sacrifice” of U.S. service members, without a critical reflection on the wars themselves, did not emerge by accident. It came about in the Jim Crow period as the Northern and Southern ruling classes sought to reunite the country around apolitical mourning, which required erasing the “divisive” issues of slavery and Black citizenship. These issues had been at the heart of the struggles of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

To truly honor Memorial Day means putting the politics back in. It means reviving the visions of emancipation and liberation that animated the first Decoration Days. It means celebrating those who have fought for justice, while exposing the cruel manipulation of hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members who have been sent to fight and die in wars for conquest and empire.

[raging moderate]

1. Excellent post!

Thank you.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

2. I don't know who would vote to "hide it"

But I saved a few Opening Posts Trump-trolls were trying to hide in another way, yesterday.

[vkkv]

3. I dd not know this.... nt

[mountain grammy]

4. Thanks for posting..

[felix_numinous]

5. K&R

[vkkv]

6. Wiki.. why not.. worked this time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day
History of the holiday

The first American Memorial Day was in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865, shortly after the end of the Civil War. During the war, at least 257 Union soldiers who were former slaves died while being held as prisoners of war at the Hampton Park Race Course in Charleston, and were buried in unmarked graves.[6] Black residents of Charleston cleaned up and landscaped the burial ground, building an enclosure and an arch labeled "Martyrs of the Race Course". They then organized a May Day ceremony, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers. Nearly 10,000 people, led by nearly 3,000 children, marched in a parade to commemorate the dead. The event was mostly attended by former slaves, but also included mutual aid societies, Union troops, black ministers and white northern missionaries.

David W. Blight described the day:

This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.[7]

It is not clear that the event in Charleston inspired the establishment of Memorial Day across the country,[8] and there are many towns claiming that they held the first Memorial Day, including Waterloo, New York, Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, Carbondale, Illinois, Columbus, Georgia, and Columbus, Mississippi.[9] . However, a recent study investigating dozens of origin theories concludes that nearly all of them are apocryphal legends.[10]
1870 Decoration Day parade in St. Paul, Minnesota

The practice of decorating soldiers' graves with flowers is an ancient custom.[11] Soldiers' graves were decorated in the U.S. before[12] and during the American Civil War. A claim was made in 1906 that the first Civil War soldier's grave ever decorated was in Warrenton, Virginia, on June 3, 1861.[13] Though not for Union soldiers, there is authentic documentation that women in Savannah, Georgia, decorated Confederate soldiers' graves in 1862.[14] In 1863, the cemetery dedication at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was a ceremony of commemoration at the graves of dead soldiers. Local historians in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, claim that ladies there decorated soldiers' graves on July 4, 1864.[15] As a result, Boalsburg promotes itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day.[16]

Following President Abraham Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, there were a variety of events of commemoration. The sheer number of soldiers of both sides who died in the Civil War (more than 600,000), meant that burial and memorialization took on new cultural significance. Under the leadership of women during the war, an increasingly formal practice of decorating graves had taken shape. In 1865, the federal government began creating national military cemeteries for the Union war dead.[17]

On May 26, 1966, President Johnson signed a presidential proclamation naming Waterloo, New York as the birthplace of Memorial Day. Earlier, the 89th Congress had adopted House Concurrent Resolution 587, which officially recognized that the patriotic tradition of observing Memorial Day began one hundred years prior in Waterloo, New York.[18]


YOU'LL PROBABLY WANT TO READ MORE AT THE LINK.. IT'S A VERY CONVOLUTED HISTORY.

[99th_Monkey]

9. The convoluted-ness no doubt has something to do with Wiki's self-editing functions.

i.e. I think it allows -- within certain bounds -- for many different "contributors" to create entries
and/or to edit them, regardless or whether you originated the entry or not ... or something like
that ... that may, in turn, muddy the waters on certain highly sensitive "political" issues, such as
racism and whether we're "over it" yet or not.

[vkkv]

11. Actually Wiki pretty well laid out info that the south, then the north, then Pres. Johnson all

made havoc with the Memorial Day holiday.

Nearly every concerned and conceivable political group wanted to claim it as theirs.

[Igel]

12. It's convoluted because it's convoluted.

There was this tradition of cleaning up graveyards to honor the fallen dead.

It was widespread.

It happened before the Civil War.

It happened after the Civil War.

It happened in the North in various places, it happened in the South in various places.

May 1, 1865 is probably the first such celebration possible after the end of the Civil War ... a rolling sort of affair from 4/9/1865 to late May, for the most part. If you go with one of the later dates, then it's not after the Civil War. The date's picked for this topic to be useful in saying "this is the first."

It was years before it become fairly standard, before it became traditional in most places, before it became visible enough to merit a national politician's imprimatur and Congressional resolution.

In fact, it's rather like how Thanksgiving came about. A series of individual acts that don't form a coherent whole until long after the fact. Then you get to go and pick some arbitrary, conventional date for the beginning, based upon the then-current political needs of those doing the picking. Then, if that's inconvenient for another group who later has a different political need for validation, you denounce the obviously false previously selected date as X-ist (whatever moral flaw is denoted by X) and pick another that's no less false but much more convenient.

[99th_Monkey]

16. Whatever you say. I'll take a pass on bickering with you about it. n/t

[heaven05]

17. I would like a link to

confirm your statements please.....I know that the Ft. Pillow Massacre was known of, the 54 Regiment from Massachusetts was known of and how the bodies of the black soldiers killed at Ft, Wagner, S.C. were abused and, along with their white commander were shoved into a unmarked mass grave where they were urinated and spit upon....,.by the end of the civil war over 179,000 black soldiers had served the union cause with 50,000 having died of wounds, disease and infection. One of the unofficial starts of this memorial day holiday was created by former slaves who dug up mass graves of black soldiers who died in the union cause and gave them a proper burual and parade...the the military and others started remembering the soldiers who died in the union cause 5 May 1865---Gen. John Logan gave out gerneral order no.11 to decorate the graves of honored civil war dead and strewing of flowers. That was the formal day origin.

Yet IT CANNOT be denied that former black slaves honoring the black civil war dead were an important origin before it dawned on 'others' to honor the Union war dead. Basically that was the origin of our american holiday.

[99th_Monkey]

7. This is awesome, really. Good to know, and I agree

we need to reclaim the day's original intent.

[Martin Eden]

8. "without a critical reflection on the wars themselves"

That, to me, has always been what's missing from Memorial Day.

Thank you for adding the historical perspective of Decoration Day, which I will remember.

[sulphurdunn]

10. Interesting. However,

no one I ever zipped into a body bag knew this. They died obedient to the will of those who sent them. I think I'll celebrate this day in remembrance of them. I don't much give a shit if they were right or wrong.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. My parents always called it "Decoration Day"

where families gathered to go out to the cemetery, with full picnic gear, and decorate the graves of the lost soldiers of those families. Now it's basically a 2nd "Veteran's Day".... except the current "Veteran's Day" was originally called "Armistice Day" (marking the end of WWI).

[tavernier]

23. Yes, it was called Decoration Day in the 40's and 50's more than Memorial Day.

I had forgotten that since I was born in '46.

[Silver_Witch]

14. I knew this only because my "daughter" is a teacher and ...

teaches all her students about this history. She is an amazing teacher and makes me super proud to be her friend and her loving "mom".

It is amazing what we did not learn in school in the 50s and 60s.

[malaise]

15. Great post

Rec

[valerief]

18. Thanks for this info! nt

[blackspade]

19. Thank you.

The jingoistic chest thumping on Memorial Day is almost insufferable.

[awoke_in_2003]

20. K&R

I did not know this, but then they don't teach real history in school. It is white history.

[Maeve]

22. http://www.snopes.com/military/memorialday.asp

WHAT'S TRUE: In May 1865, free blacks in Charleston reburied dead Union prisoners of war and held a cemetery dedication ceremony.

WHAT'S FALSE: The May 1865 event was the origin of the modern Memorial Day observance.