How Memorial Day was hijacked.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

Memorial Day was first celebrated as "Decoration Day". It was started in Charleston, S.C. by freed slaves to decorate the graves of 257 Union prisoners that had died while confined in the local race course and buried there. Members of local black churches built a wall around the burial ground, and gardeners arranged he graves in neat rows. An arch was erected naming it "The Martyrs of the Race Course." Thousands of ex-slaves marched to it on May 1, 1867, led by 3000 black school children from the newly established "Freedom Schools". They spread flowers over the graves.

It was a day of mourning for the fallen liberators and a celebration of the freedom they brought.

Later, as Reconstruction was abandoned in favor of "reconciliation", it became "Memorial Day". It was no longer fashionable, or politically correct, to see the Civil War as a movement to free the slaves. The Freedom Schools were closed. The Freedman's Bureau was shut down, the Union Troops were withdrawn and the new apartheid was installed. Now, it was a "Memorial Day" for all the fallen soldiers on both sides. Even though many of those soldiers fought to retain the slavery that the founders of Decoration Day had celebrated the end of.

This is a very brief synopsis from a book called "Race and Reunion" by David W. Blight.