Memorial Day weekend is almost here. For most of us, it’s a relaxing three day weekend spent with our friends and neighbors. Everyone in the office is looking forward to a weekend in the sun, listening to tunes, grilling, and chilling. At TrainUp.com, we all know how to best celebrate a three day weekend. However, most people having a glorious backyard cook-out this weekend likely don’t actually know the true origins of this holiday. Where does this day come from? What is it that we are celebrating?
Well folks, if I asked a group of ten random people, I bet none of them would know the full answer. They might say, “It’s to honor the fallen”, or “I think it’s a Civil War thing”. That’s close, but not a complete answer. In fact, the real story might surprise you.
The exact origin of Memorial Day is often debated among historians, yet among all of the research there is a strong case for the beginning of this holiday stretching all the way back to the year 1865. Professor David Blight from Yale University wrote an article for the New York Times about Memorial Day’s humble roots at a historic race track in Charleston. The racetrack was used as a confederate prison during the Civil War, and many union soldiers were buried there. This area was largely abandoned at the time, however the remaining residents organized a ceremony there to honor the fallen soldiers. Due to the fact that those who remained in the area were recently freed slaves, they are the ones we can credit for starting the traditions we know of today as Memorial Day.
Blight writes, “…But for the earliest and most remarkable Memorial Day, we must return to where the war began. By the spring of 1865, after a long siege and prolonged bombardment, the beautiful port city of Charleston, S.C., lay in ruin and occupied by Union troops. Among the first soldiers to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the 21st United States Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the city’s official surrender. Whites had largely abandoned the city, but thousands of blacks, mostly former slaves, had remained, and they conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war.” (1)
Today the growth of the holiday is attributed to a couple of Civil War Generals, Gen. Logan and Gen. Murray, who were good friends and promoted this holiday together. They called it “Declaration Day“, which was later known as Memorial day. This holiday would soon be observed nation-wide. This lead to some historians marking the beginning of Memorial Day as May 5th, 1866 in Waterloo, NY. However, without the freed slaves residing in Charleston, Declaration Day, and later Memorial Day, would not exist as we know it.
USMemorialDay.org writes: “On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there.”(4)
To further back this historical story of origin, author Tessa Berenson wrote for Time magazine in 2015, “It’s unclear exactly where the holiday originated—Charleston, S.C., Waterloo, N.Y., Columbus, Ga. and other towns all claim to be the birthplace of the holiday. The event in Charleston that may have precipitated the holiday offers poignant evidence of a country struggling to rebuild itself after a bloody war: 257 Union soldiers died in prison in Charleston during the Civil War and were buried in unmarked graves, and the town’s black residents organized a May Day ceremony in which they landscaped a burial ground to properly honor the soldiers.” (2)
From that moment forward, Americans began to honor the fallen. The traditions carried out on the same day every year began to spread across our nation.
The staff at History.com wrote about this phenomenon in an article they published in 2009,
“By the late 1860s, Americans in various towns and cities had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.” (3)
It’s remarkable that this history is not more widely-known. We should be talking about the real reason behind our national holidays, acknowledging and celebrating the struggles and achievements we have met as a nation.
One word that comes to mind for us at TrainUp this Memorial Day, is thankfulness. TrainUp.com is a minority owned business. Our CEO Jeremy Tillman is an African American entrepreneur, and when I spoke to him about this article, he said the following:
TrainUp.com CEO Jeremy Tillman
“Its super easy these days to take for granted the freedom, liberties and opportunities we now have. As an entrepreneur I’m always looking forward but this Memorial Day weekend, with gratitude, I’m taking extra time to look back.”
While you celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, it may suddenly hit you how lucky we are to live in a time in this country when we are free. When you drink beers with your neighbors, and watch your kids swim together in your community pool, remember that it wasn’t so long ago that we didn’t have these liberties. It was the sacrifice of others that allowed us to experience this freedom. When you chat with your friends of various backgrounds and ethnicities, perhaps quiz them to see how much they truly know about Memorial Day. It’s a story for the ages!
Happy Memorial Day from all of us at TrainUp.com!
Works cited:
- BLIGHT, B. W. (2011, May 29). Forgetting Why We Remember. Retrieved May 24, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/opinion/30blight.html
- Berenson, T. (2015, May 24). Why Do We Celebrate Memorial Day. Retrieved May 24, 2017, from http://time.com/3892630/why-do-we-celebrate-memorial-day/
- com Staff. (2009, May 24). Memorial Day. Retrieved May 24, 2017, from http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/memorial-day-history
- Claybourn, J. (2014, May 24). Memorial Day History. Retrieved May 24, 2017, from http://www.usmemorialday.org/?page_id=2
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