By Sarah Lazare
Union General John Logan is often credited with founding Memorial
Day. The commander-in-chief of a Union veterans’ organization called the
Grand Army of the Republic, Logan issued a decree
establishing what was then named “Decoration Day” on May 5, 1868,
declaring it “designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or
otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their
country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost
every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”
Today,
cities across the North and South claim credit for establishing the
first Decoration Day—from Macon, Georgia to Richmond, Virginia to
Carbondale, Illinois. Yet, a key story of the holiday has been nearly
erased from public memory and most official accounts, including that offered by the the Department of Veterans Affairs.
During
the spring of 1865, African-Americans in Charleston, South
Carolina—most of them former slaves—held a series of memorials and
rituals to honor unnamed fallen Union soldiers and boldly celebrate the
struggle against slavery. One of the largest such events took place on
May first of that year but had been largely forgotten until David
Blight, a history professor at Yale University, found records at a
Harvard archive. In a New York Times article published in 2011, Blight described
the scene. While it is difficult to pinpoint the precise birthplace of
the holiday, it is fair to say that ceremonies like the following are
largely erased from the American narrative of Memorial Day.
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Source: AlterNet.com
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