Kathleen Marple Kalb's Blog, page 6

SWIM WITH YOUR BOOTS ON?

Never mind the wool stockings, worry about the boots.
Yes, swim boots. Actual boots worn in the water for swimming.
They’re the most amazing part of a Victorian swim costume.
You probably already know 19th century swim gear is a long way from even the most modest modern outfits. Sure, there are a significant minority, myself included, who wear legging swimsuits and rashguard shirts for modesty, sunburn protection, or some combination of the two. But nobody’s out there splashing around in several layers of wool.
With boots.
They don’t make sense to us…but they’re a perfect fit for the getup as it evolved.
When swimming became a socially acceptable activity for mixed-gender groups, instead of slipping off to skinny-dip in the nearest body of water, people needed something to wear. As usual in matters of dress, men were more concerned with comfort than modesty, and their swimwear evolved from the wool long underwear that was common at the time.
Women’s clothes, though, were much more about coverage than comfort, never mind safety. Well after the turn of the 20th century, women were still wearing full wool union suits with dresses over them, or long-sleeved dresses with wool stockings in the water. You’ll note two mentions of wool there – for good reason.
We associate wool with warm winter gear, but it was actually a pretty good material for swim stockings. In the right knit, it’s breathable and handles water well. Cotton, the other possibility, gets soggy and loses its shape pretty quickly. In case you’re wondering, nobody would wear silk stockings in the water – if you could even get them, you’d save them for your best ballgown.
Still, nobody wants to be running around in all those layers at the beach – and for sure not in the water. Long skirts and long hair looked nice, but you’ll note that almost as soon as women started swimming competitively, you start seeing bathing caps and more streamlined suits.
Now, about those boots.
They really WERE boots. When I first started looking at vintage prints, I thought maybe it was just the way things looked in the illustrations or photos, but nope, women wore canvas boots at the beach – and you can still find them online!
Boots in general were the signature footwear of the time. Men, women, and children wore boots for almost everything outside the house. A woman might have a pair of high-heeled slippers for her fanciest evenings…but she might as easily wear satin boots.
So it’s really no surprise that women would wear boots to the beach. Swim boots were usually black or cream-colored canvas, with laces. Regular boots sometimes came in canvas, so that part wasn’t exactly unique.
But the soles were. Unlike street boots, which had leather or rubber soles, swim boots usually had canvas soles. Overall, surviving models look a lot like boxing shoes, between the laces and the flat, thin sole.
The end result was a relatively light, flexible shoe that would provide some protection from any hazards in the water.
Note “relatively” light. You’d still be paddling around out there with a bunch of wet canvas laced to your feet. No wonder women ditched the shoes as soon as they started competitive swimming.
Still, swim boots live on today (beyond the vintage ones on Etsy!). Those water shoes you wear at the beach are direct descendants of them…if just a little cuter.

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CONEY ISLAND GETAWAY

Not long ago, I took part in a long and revered New York tradition. Not an historical commemoration or a museum event…but a trip to Coney Island!
It’s a classic New York moment – and a whole lot of fun, besides. And it’s still recognizably the same place it was back in the 1800s.
Even now, the opening of the Coney Island rides is the first sign that summer is coming. Luna Park’s Cyclone roller coaster opens in early April, and winter-weary New Yorkers rejoice at the thought that fun times are ahead.
New Yorkers have been heading to Coney Island for a good time for well over a century and a half. In the 1830s, it was far enough away from Manhattan to be a real escape, and the vacationers started coming. Soon, enterprising folks started building hotels to house them and activities to amuse them.
Transportation helped. The first hotel, in 1829, was put up by the same group that built the first bridge and shell road. As trains, steamships and ferries reduced the ride from a half-day to a couple of hours, more and more Manhattanites started taking the trip. Which of course led to more and more hotels, resorts and activities.
The area eventually grew into three distinct resort areas: West Brighton, Brighton Beach, and Manhattan Beach, each with its own clientele. According to heartofconeyisland.com, West Brighton was working-class, Brighton Beach middle-class, and Manhattan Beach upper-class. But then, at the end of the 19th century, something very big and different happened at West Brighton: the nation’s first real amusement park.
Attractions had been around since the 1870s or so: aquariums, roller coasters and other things to interest and entertain the visitors. But the idea of a bunch of rides and activities in one place, for one price – the modern amusement or theme park – started with Captain Paul Boynton and his Sea Lion Park. (Fun fact: he got the idea from P.T. Barnum’s Big Top – all the circus acts under one canvas roof!) Sea Lion Park opened in 1895, and lasted until the rainy summer of 1902 convinced Captain Boynton he wanted to do something else.
That was just fine with the next wave of amusement park developers.
In 1903, Luna Park took over the former site of Sea Lion Park, with new and exciting attractions and the big treat of electric lights at night. Not too far away, Dreamland – with a central tower and a million lights – followed a year later. And soon after that, the iconic Coney Island Boardwalk was built, under an agreement between the City (Brooklyn became part of New York in 1898) and local leaders.
It was the start of Coney Island’s heyday as an amusement area, which lasted for several decades. The Cyclone – a beloved institution whether or not you’re a roller coaster rider – opened in 1927, and was eventually named an official New York City landmark.
There’s not enough space here to chronicle the mid-to-late 20th century decline, reversal and renewal in the area. Enough to say that I made sure to take a good look at the Cyclone while I was there on a family fun trip – and that I left the rides to my son and his cousins!

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DON'T DRINK THE WATER

DON’T DRINK THE WATER
Just drink lots of water.
How often have health experts told us that’s the key to staying healthy in hot weather?
Unfortunately, before modern water treatment plants, the water could be every bit as dangerous as dehydration.
In fact, in a truly deadly irony, it could give you a disease that killed by dehydration: cholera.
The disease was a summer scourge in many cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, spreading easily anytime wastewater came in contact with drinking water. The nineteenth-century cholera pandemics were particularly devastating for New York, and eventually led to some significant changes.
Eventually.
When the century’s first major pandemic arrived in the City in 1832, more than 3500 of the city’s 250,000 residents died, a staggering rate far higher than the worst of the Covid outbreak. And since many of those deaths happened in lower-class neighborhoods, populated by immigrants and people of color, the city’s upper crust happily blamed the whole thing on the alleged dirtiness and moral decay of the victims. It was a convenient dodge, if incredibly offensive to modern sensibilities.
It would take a couple more trips through the pandemic meat grinder, and hard, determined work by early public-health experts to make people change their opinions and acknowledge that the real problem wasn’t lazy, dirty immigrants but poor handling of water and the incredible overcrowding in lower-class neighborhoods.
If you think the City is crowded now, imagine packing two or three families – often with large (to us) numbers of children into a couple of tenement rooms. It was unpleasant when everyone was healthy. And the crowding made it incredibly difficult to stop the spread of anything contagious.
Many of the illnesses we now consider minor childhood issues thanks to vaccines and antibiotics just burned through the crowded neighborhoods like wildfire, first claiming the most vulnerable, but ultimately killing even healthy adults in large numbers. .
Cholera took a similar, but more insidious path. Before John Snow, a doctor who served a poor London neighborhood, connected the spread of the disease to a public water pump, people saw its spread as a mystery, and reached for all kinds of wild ideas – including moral decay. It was only when, in 1854, Dr. Snow took the handle off that pump, forcing people to go to a clean well a short distance away, and people stopped dying, that the message finally started to get through.
The cholera fight forced cities into major changes: cleaning up the water supply and making sure wastewater didn’t come in contact with drinking water, inventing and building treatment plants. It went well beyond pipes and pumps, though. The realization that crowding was part of the problem ultimately helped fuel the drive for parks and better housing.
In a very real way, the cholera outbreaks helped fuel New York’s commitment to greenspace, so people would never again be packed in such tiny spaces just waiting for some germ to take them. And, the cholera outbreaks ultimately pushed people more toward science, and away from hidebound social assumptions that disease was only for the poor, dirty, and immoral.
An awful lot to think about with your glass of water!
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EGGNOG & FIRECRACKERS

The Founding Fathers (and Mothers) would not recognize the way we celebrate a lot of holidays these days, but they’d fit right in at a Fourth of July party.
Food and fireworks were at the center of early festivities too, if a lot looser on the safety rules.
It was just as John Adams would have wanted it – in a letter to Abigail, he called for massive nationwide celebrations including parades, shows, illuminations and more. The new country took his advice and Independence Day quickly became an excuse for a grand summer party.
Mr. Adams, though, would not have approved of the way the festivities evolved in New York; Tammany Hall, the infamous political machine, ran the party for most of the 19th century, providing feast and fun in return for votes and clout. Originally, the festivities were a sort of big open street fair with food booths near City Hall.
The neighbors didn’t much like that and spent several decades working to stamp out the party. Eventually, they succeeded – in handing over the event to Tammany Hall. One late 19th century writer observed with a distinctly disapproving sniff that it had become a holiday for little boys and the political machine.
Whoever was running it, though, everyone could still agree that food and fireworks were the center of the party.
Some things are familiar; plenty of people still mark the Fourth with a pig roast. Pickled oysters, not so much. It made sense at the time, though. Oysters were not in season in the summer, at least partly because of the possibility of illness from contaminated water, so the only way you were going to get a fast and simple meal of oysters was to preserve them.
Another treat is something we still enjoy – but not on July 4th: egg nog! While we associate it with the winter holidays, egg nog was actually a year-round festive drink in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was a special-occasion treat because of the huge number of eggs – and especially the sugar and spices, both of which were expensive and sometimes hard to get. Not to mention the rum and/or brandy.
Lobster was also often on the menu. And it’s worth remembering that for a very long time, lobsters were poor people’s food because they were plentiful and cheap.
For dessert? Pineapple – very exotic at least until the late 19th century – and various puddings. Thanks to unreliable refrigeration, ice cream was a very high-end delicacy until the late 19th century. (That’s a whole other post!)
So what about the fireworks?
Well, that’s the scary part. Remember that writer who called it a holiday for little boys? He meant that the boys were setting off the fireworks. In the days before federal safety standards, no one thought much of allowing the little guys to run around with firecrackers. Before you clutch your pearls, though, don’t forget that a lot of us grew up waving sparklers around, and they’re not exactly harmless.
Leaving the pyrotechnics to the pros is no great loss – I’ll vote for the Macy’s Spectacular every year! And the eggnog? Well, maybe if you make it into ice cream!


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THE BAD OLD DAYS

If you’re wondering why we need Pride Month, let me take you back to the time before
we had it. Not centuries ago. Not even half a century.
When I was a teenager, growing up in rural Western Pennsylvania, we didn’t have out and proud. We didn’t even have out.
That doesn’t mean we didn’t have LGBTQ people, or even a few safe spaces for people to be their true selves. But in the larger community, there was little or no visibility, and nearly no acceptance.
We’re not talking beatings in the street here, but social death. In small towns, anyone who doesn’t fit in is ostracized. Very politely, because this was Western PA, but absolutely frozen out.
People were absolutely, and rightly, terrified of being outed. I’ll never forget the look on a theatre friend’s face when I ran into him at the Fourth of July parade with his (female) fiancée. We’d been in a few shows together the summer before, and he’d been comfortably out in the small community college group. A year later, though, he was clearly trying to comply with the expectations of the time and the area, and running into me reminded him of everything he had to hide. We mumbled polite greetings and got out of the conversation as quickly as possible.
I never saw him again. I don’t know if he married her -- or if he ultimately got to live his truth. I sure hope he did.
That’s just a tiny little sketch of the way the world was then.
It wasn’t okay to be LGBTQ, and the community at large made sure people knew it, from the casual use of the word “gay” as a pejorative to the guy who calmly observed at a church meeting that he’d rather have a dead son than a gay one.
It’s taken decades of battles large and small to change those attitudes.
And unfortunately, the attitudes are still out there, with people trying to coat their bigotry in new spin – or, even more depressingly, making the same tired arguments we thought were debunked two decades ago. The battle is far from over.
Still, it’s important to celebrate the victories – and celebrate Pride.
And so, I’m going to close with one more Throwback Thursday memory: June 2015, a New York City Pride Parade just days after the Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage was the law of the land. My office is near the parade route, and my shift ended just before the parade began, so I got to absorb the scene.
The streets of Greenwich Village were full of joyful people and rainbow flags. Floats celebrating LGBTQ families. Samba drag queens in green glitter dancing with NYPD officers. All kinds of couples walking down the street hand-in-hand, undramatically happy. Same-sex parents pushing strollers decorated with rainbow flags. And everywhere, in every font and color you can imagine, one simple phrase: “LOVE IS LOVE.”

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STEAMED APPLE

Summer in most of the U.S. is beginning in an absolutely miserable way, with a massive heat dome creating record temperatures. Even so, we’re confronting this misery with a lot of modern conveniences that people didn’t have in the 19th century – like air conditioning, refrigeration, and sanitation for starters.
In the Heatwave of 1896, most New Yorkers were pretty much on their own.
It’s hard to be sure exactly how hot it got those ten days in August. One writer suggests that if temperatures were in the mid-90s on gauges placed high on buildings, it was probably closer to 120 on the black asphalt. The precise number wasn’t really important as the sun beat mercilessly down, turning the pavement to a grill, and tenements to roasters.
Those tenements were some of the worst, and most dangerous, places to be. People were packed in at levels we can’t imagine now, and it was stuffy on a good day. During the heatwave, residents did the only thing they could, hanging out windows and climbing onto roofs for any breath of air they could find.
It didn’t save them.
Hundreds died inside from heat stroke, especially babies, who were the first casualties because their tiny bodies don’t regulate temperature as well. The climbers didn’t fare much better. Deaths from falls became so common the city opened up parks for sleeping.
The other group that suffered most is the same one that suffers today: outdoor laborers. The majority of people who died were actually working-class men, who had to go out there and do whatever backbreaking job they usually did, only on streets that held the heat and radiated it back at them.
At first, the City didn’t do much, leaving it to people to just deal with it as best they could. As the heat wore on, the death toll rose, and the sheer misery increased, the outcry grew. And finally, when it was almost over, leaders decided to act. The Public Works Department re-arranged shifts so its men (and they were all men then) didn’t have to work in the heat of the day, and started opening fire hydrants to give people a chance to cool off.
And the Police Commissioner brought out the ice.
The Commissioner, a fellow by the name of Theodore Roosevelt, gave away free ice from police stations and made sure it was taken into the tenements. He learned a lot about his fellow New Yorkers and their lives, and at least one writer believes the experience helped shape his later policies as president. If you’re curious, Ed Kohn literally wrote the book on the heatwave: HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN, 2010.
After ten days, the heat finally broke.
For the survivors, it would be a terrible memory, and if they lived long enough, a wonderful story with which to torment their grandchildren. But this time, when Grandpa said he lived through the worst heat wave ever, he wasn’t exaggerating for effect.
There’s also some truth to the walking to school through three feet of snow thing…but that’s another post!

(Got a #ThrowbackThursday idea? Drop it in the comments)

THE SWIMSUIT COMPETITION

Swimming isn’t new. But we’ve only been doing it in cute little getups for a couple centuries. Yep. For most of human civilization, your bathing suit and your birthday suit were the same thing. Oh, folks might grab a loincloth if they were feeling especially modest (or inadequate) but that was about it.
This worked, in part, because people weren’t really swimming laps. They were “bathing,” most of the time, going for a healthful dip in the ocean, lake, or mineral spring, and almost always in sex-segregated groups so nobody had to look at anything they didn’t want to see – or be seen in a way they didn’t want to be.
Eventually, modesty started to be more of a thing, even when taking the waters. Especially for women. The first female swimsuit was a thing called a “bathing gown,” exactly what it sounds like: a big ol’ nightgown-ish thing that covered you from neck to wrists and ankles, sometimes in thick wool, so that you could get your nice dip without showing anything interesting.
While the women were thrashing around in soggy wool, it won’t surprise you to know that the guys were still frolicking naked. Or maybe leaving their breeches on. (Until at least the early 18th century, a lot of men didn’t bother with boxers or briefs, but just tucked the very long end of a shirt around everything. Sorry – that’s one of those things you can’t un-know!)
But by the 1800s, bathing was starting to become a bigger deal, and often a touristy one. As beach days became more fun, people became a lot less interested in partaking either in wet wool tents or naked to the world. So enterprising designers started coming up with various “bathing costumes.” Soon, when you hopped in your bathing machine – more on those later this summer – you could leave your street clothes and put on something that would let you actually move around in the water.
That did NOT mean you were allowed to surrender standards of modesty. If you were a lady, chances were pretty good that your bathing suit started with big thick wool stockings, topped with shorts or a split skirt, and a tunic over that. Until the very end of the 19th century, the tunic had sleeves, and there wasn’t much actual skin showing. Not comfortable…but pretty sensible in a world before good sunscreen.
The guys, as usual, had a good bit more leeway. No stockings for them. And we got to see their manly arms a long time before the ladies freed the elbow. Men’s swimsuits moved much close to the baggy union suit underwear that most of them were wearing on dry land…only in bright colors, and often with a tunic top. Just like only the most adventurous fellas wear the teensy ones now (and only a very few of them should!) there were men who were a lot more comfortable out there with a tunic over any sensitive spots.
And this time – the pearl-clutchers were right. You start with a swimsuit of a long-sleeve tunic over a skirt over stockings…and the first thing you know, things happen. By the end of the 19th century, a lot of women had ditched the stockings – do YOU want to wrap your legs in soggy wool knit? – and cut off the sleeves. Soon, they’d be borrowing the union suit idea from the boys – and the guys would get rid of their shirts.
Major upgrade if you ask me.
Just no Speedos, fellas!

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SUMMER STYLE

For many of us, summer brings the annual effort to find work-appropriate clothes that don’t feel like a layer of plastic wrap. As unpleasant as the search for the least offensive blazer is, it’s nothing compared to a corset and a half-dozen layers of cotton without air conditioning.
That’s exactly what women had to face in the late 19th century, and honestly, for hundreds of years before. But it wasn’t really until the 1800s that ridiculous standards of layering up really took hold.
If, like me, you grew up on a steady diet of L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder and the like, you probably remember comments like “A nice woman never wears less than three petticoats, at least one flannel.” Also, if you’re like me, you probably didn’t believe people actually wore that much clothing.
Wrong. A look at fashion plates and popular advice will tell you that they sure did. In the lists for a middle-to-upper class bride’s trousseau, the sheer quantity of chemises, petticoats and drawers suggests women were swathed in layer upon layer of thin cotton. That was the good part: it was thin and it was cotton. But there sure was a lot of it.
By 1900, when Ella Shane and her friends would be dressing for a hot day, they’d start with pantalets and a camisole, or “combinations” – one-piece long johns to you -- if they were especially forward-thinking. Then came the stays (even singers like Ella wore them, though she wouldn’t lace tight: a nice woman NEVER left the house without a corset). Next a corset-cover, essentially another camisole. Plus those petticoats, though hopefully not heavy flannel in the summer heat. Stockings too.
Which finally brings us to the dress. Those sheer white or pastel lawn frocks you see in the vintage photos are very pretty, but they’re really just practical. If you’ve already got four or five layers on, you want to top it off with the least clothing you can decently wear. So the dress has to be as thin and breathable as the rest of the outfit.
People who’ve tried it (I’m not one of them, being about a foot too tall to wear anything dating from the time) say it’s not as tortuous as it seems, as long as you don’t lace the stays very tight. The thin natural fibers do help wick sweat, and all the light loose petticoats and skirts let air move. Which is all well and good, but remember, you’re still out there in many, many layers of clothing in a world without air conditioning.
So it’s not surprising that most old summer pictures of women in street clothes – as opposed to bathing suits, which is another post for another day – show them sitting on chaises in the shade or slowly walking in the sea breeze. That’s about all most of us could reasonably manage in a getup like that.
You might want to spare a thought here for the maids, laundresses and other working women of the time, who were expected to dress “decently” by their employers’ standards, but did not have the luxury of relaxing in the shade. Never mind the women helping their men in the gardens and fields. Not just backbreaking work – but backbreaking work in clothes that only added to the burden.
So, as uncomfortable as she might have been, Ella would know it could have been a lot worse, and she’d be grateful. And it sure makes the blazer and jeans look better!

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NO SUNSCREEN, NO PROBLEM

Yes, the Victorians were obsessed with fresh air (Queen Victoria herself never saw a window she didn’t want to open!) and they were pretty fond of sunshine, too. But they were not at all interested in what a day out in all of that light and air would do to a lady’s skin. In the late 1800s, there were no reliable sunscreens, and no really good ways to deal with the after-effects of a sunburn beyond home remedies like buttermilk to ease the pain or lemon juice for the freckles and discoloration. Not to mention the fact that the idea of a status suntan was still several decades away.
In the Gilded Age, we are still very much in the era of fashionable pallor. With, of course, the whole room full of unpleasant issues related to that lily whiteness. For what we would now consider all the wrong reasons, ladies were absolutely determined to avoid sun damage with any means they had. Problem was, they didn’t have very many.
Mostly, it was umbrellas and parasols. Big, serviceable ones for the beach, and cute little ones for the promenade, but always something. Fashion plates always show ladies walking with them, and it seems like a spiffy fashion statement. Indeed it was, but before sunscreen and a fast way home, a lady needed to be prepared for anything.
Not just with the parasol, either. Every time I post 19th century beach images, at least one friend says: “Wow, look at all the clothes!” As in – all of the layers of clothes! It’s no joke: on any given day, a respectable woman would have at least four or five layers on: combinations – that’s underwear to you -- a couple of petticoats, shirtwaist, jacket and possible coat. Plus, at the time, the beach required one to add to the ensemble, not delete!
On a very hot day, the layers would be lightweight and white, but they’d still be there. Long sleeves and high necks were modest, of course, and that was important for a respectable lady in daytime…but they were equally helpful in protecting exposed skin from the sun.
Then came the accessories.
A hat, of course, and even if the current fashion was for a frilly little nod in the direction of millinery, sun protection required a serious hat. Broad-brimmed straw hats never really went out of fashion in the summer; they might be trimmed up differently, depending on the colors and preferences of the moment, but it was hard to argue with a style that did such a good job of covering the face, and often the neck and decollete as well. Veils, too, were often part of the picture, whether full face (popular when riding in a motorcar) or just tied around the hat to be pulled out for more cover as needed.
Don’t forget the gloves. Almost as important as the face were smooth hands. While the amount of work involved in running any basically clean and decent home was mind-boggling, most ladies weren’t doing that much of it. And they certainly weren’t willing to risk their dainty hands in the sun. So gloves it was. Long with a short-sleeved dress, short for a wrist-length sleeve, often with sweet little buttons at the wrist, and various adorable trimmings.
Add it all up, and you’re probably more covered for a day at the beach than you are for an autumn walk in the park, because you might be able to skip the veil and parasol!

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THE FIRST DECORATION DAY

Depending on where – and when – you grew up, you may have heard people referring to Monday’s U.S. holiday as Decoration Day, and if you did, you probably know why. The federal holiday known as Memorial Day began as an effort to place flowers on the graves of fallen Civil War soldiers.
The part of the story you may not know is that in at least one telling, the earliest observance began in Charleston, South Carolina, organized by formerly enslaved people to honor the Union War dead. In 1865.
Yale historian David Blight found an account of this in a dusty folder in the Harvard Library marked “First Decoration Day.” Inside, he found an extraordinary story.
It started in February 1865, after the fall of Charleston to the Union. After Confederate troops evacuated the city, most of the people left were freed slaves. One of the first things they did was move the bodies of more than 200 Union prisoners of war from a prison camp at the former country club into a more dignified resting place near the club’s racecourse, with a memorial to the “Martyrs of the Racecourse.”
Then, on May 1, 1865, they held a parade and commemoration at the course, complete with famous Black Union regiments marching, and Black ministers reading from the Bible. There were a few white missionaries on hand, but the ceremonies were organized and led by the formerly enslaved and other Black people.
It’s the earliest known commemoration of the Civil War dead…the first real Memorial Day.
And there the story ends for more than a century.
(More on this in Dave Roos' excellent piece on History.com" "One of the Earliest Memorial Day Ceremonies was held by Freed African-Americans.")
Within a few years, a wide tradition of decorating the graves of fallen soldiers had taken hold, and historians had begun crediting it to the widows and orphans from both sides trying to come together in their grief. Within a few more years, the white power structure was very firmly back in control in Charleston, and nobody outside the African-American community wanted to remember who had really started the observances.
Decoration Day became Memorial Day after World War One, and if anything, the people in charge in the South were less interested in hearing about where the observance began.
Historian Blight couldn’t even get a straight answer from the Charleston Historical society when he tried to research the story. Not until he spoke in Charleston, and an older Black woman approached him, and said “You mean that’s true? My granddaddy’s story is true?”
As far as we can tell from surviving accounts, it is indeed.
More about all of this in Dave Roos' excellent piece on History.com, "One of the Earliest Memorial Day Ceremonies was Held By Freed African-Americans."
Honoring the fallen isn’t a new thing; nations have been paying tribute to war dead as long as there’ve been wars. But the story of where Memorial Day really began – and how the truth was at the very least overlooked if not actively buried – tells us a lot about who we were, and who we are as a nation.
And reminds us that there’s still a lot of work to do to become a more perfect union.

Got a #ThrowbackThursday idea? Drop it in the comments!