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.

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