According to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, the first memorial day was observed by formerly enslaved black people at the Washington Race Course (today the location of Hampton Park) in Charleston, South Carolina. The race course had been used as a temporary Confederate prison camp for captured Union soldiers in 1865, as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who died there. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, formerly enslaved people exhumed the bodies from the mass grave and reinterred them properly with individual graves. They built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch and declared it a Union graveyard. The work was completed in only ten days. On May 1, 1865, the Charleston newspaper reported that a crowd of up to ten thousand, mainly black residents, including 2800 children, proceeded to the location for included sermons, singing, and a picnic on the grounds, thereby creating the first Decoration Day (which later was renamed "Memorial Day")
My heart is grateful today for all those who have gone before to fight for freedom and justice some sacrificing their lives and all their own peace for us. I remember the families who have suffered deep wounds from the loss of their beloved sons and daughters. I remember men and women and their families who continue to suffer the impact of war in their daily lives from PTSD and other wounds of war. This year has given a whole new meaning to Memorial Day.
