Happy Memorial Day everyone. I hope everyone is enjoying this day off. But while everyone is enjoying their day off barbecueing, grilling, drinking, smoking, kicking it with family, has anyone ever wondered the true origins of Memorial Day? I know I have. The older I get, the more I wonder why we celebrate certain things, holidays, customs, and rituals. Why do we have certain belief systems, traditions, and what’s the origin of those?
Today we celebrate Memorial Day. And that happens to be the specific subject I’m curious of the origin of.
The True Origins: May 1, 1865 – Charleston, SC
After the Confederacy collapsed, freed Black people in Charleston held what is arguably the first Memorial Day ceremony at the site of a former Confederate prison camp. Union soldiers had been buried in a mass grave there. Black residents of Charleston—many of them newly emancipated—exhumed the bodies of more than 250 Union soldiers and reinterred them with honor and dignity in a proper cemetery.
They then organized a massive procession to commemorate the dead:
10,000 people attended, including 3,000 Black schoolchildren, Black ministers, and white missionaries.
They sang hymns, laid flowers, and honored the fallen soldiers—particularly those who died fighting for Black freedom.
This act of reverence and political defiance was both a mourning ritual and a declaration of freedom. It was documented in contemporary newspapers and later rediscovered by historian David Blight, who wrote extensively about it in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.
Why It’s Overlooked
Over time, the Charleston event was erased from mainstream narratives. The official founding of Memorial Day is typically traced to 1868, when General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic declared May 30 as “Decoration Day.” But that sanitized version deliberately downplayed the Black-led origins of the holiday.
Why It Matters
Acknowledging that Black Americans essentially invented Memorial Day isn’t just historical trivia—it’s a truth bomb that:
Reframes patriotism through a Black lens
Honors Black resistance and agency during Reconstruction
Challenges whitewashed versions of American history
This origin story is a powerful reminder that Black freedom struggles and national memory are deeply intertwined—and that the fight to remember is also a fight for justice.
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