Decoration Day: Origins of Memorial Day and another piece of Black American history that was erased and revised.
For political and historic reasons unrelated to Black American history, I usually don't go out of my way to thank anyone for their service to the United States. It's not for me. But today, I just wanted to show some flowers towards your ancestors for another piece of stolen and modified history.
>At the April 1901 dedication of the General John A. Logan Memorial, speakers like President William McKinley and New York Senator Chauncey Depew spoke of the nation’s debt to General Logan for his General Order No.11, which in 1868 formalized the annual floral decoration of the graves on Memorial Day, also referred to as Decoration Day. While there is a historical debate over where and when the very first observation of Memorial Day took place, one of the earliest recorded observations of the holiday indisputably took place in Charleston, South Carolina, in the closing days of the Civil War.
On May 1, 1865, the freed people of Charleston gathered at the old racetrack to decorate the graves of 257 Union prisoners of war who had been hastily buried by the retreating Confederate army. The largely African American crowd watched the men of the 35^(th) and 104^(th) United States Colored Troops (USCT), along with the men of the famed 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, perform drills before listening to speeches addressing the meaning of the long and bloody war. When the ceremonies were finished, the crowd dispersed to lay flowers on the graves of the men who had died fighting for Union and for liberty.
If you're interested, here's a little more info. Please refer to the footnotes on these pages for further reading. Of course, Google works as well. Have a blessed week, cousins.🙏🏿
- Celebrating the Black History of Memorial Day