{"id":18038,"date":"2013-05-29T13:24:53","date_gmt":"2013-05-29T17:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=18038"},"modified":"2013-05-29T13:24:53","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T17:24:53","slug":"how-memorial-day-was-stripped-of-its-african-american-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2013\/05\/how-memorial-day-was-stripped-of-its-african-american-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u201cMemorial Day\u201d was stripped of its African-American Roots"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Black<\/a>
Black Civil War soldiers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Written by: Ben Becker<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What we now know as Memorial Day began as \u201cDecoration Day\u201d in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. It was a tradition<\/span>\u00a0initiated by former slaves to celebrate emancipation<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0and commemorate those who died for that cause.<\/span><\/p>\n

These days, Memorial Day is arranged as a day \u201cwithout politics\u201d\u2014a 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The concept that the population must \u201cremember the sacrifice\u201d 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 \u201cdivisive\u201d issues of slavery and Black citizenship. These issues had been at the heart of the struggles of the Civil War and Reconstruction.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the U.S. Civil War came to a close in April 1865, Union troops entered the city of Charleston, S.C., where four years prior the war had begun. While white residents had largely fled the city, Black residents of Charleston remained to celebrate and welcome the troops, who included the TwentyFirst Colored Infantry. Their celebration on May 1, 1865, the first \u201cDecoration Day,\u201d later became Memorial Day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yale University<\/span> historian David Blight retold the story<\/span><\/a><\/span>:<\/p>\n

\n

During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters\u2019 horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some 28 black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, \u201cMartyrs of the Race Course.\u201dThen, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders\u2019 race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy\u2019s horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freed people. A\u00a0New York Tribune<\/em>\u00a0correspondent witnessed the event, describing \u201ca procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At 9 a.m. on May 1, the procession stepped off led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing \u201cJohn Brown\u2019s Body.\u201d The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many as possible gathered in the cemetery enclosure; a childrens\u2019 choir sang \u201cWe\u2019ll Rally around the Flag,\u201d the \u201cStar-Spangled Banner,\u201d and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Fuente<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by: Ben Becker What we now know as Memorial Day began as \u201cDecoration Day\u201d in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. It..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,181,189,97],"tags":[197,357,227,350,347],"class_list":["post-18038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-labor","category-us-military","category-us-news","tag-imperialism","tag-racism","tag-racist-oppression","tag-united-states-history","tag-workers-struggle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/black-civil-war-soldiers.jpg?fit=350%2C252&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}