Pulitzer prize winner David Blight has tried to raise awareness of freed slaves who decorated soldiers’ graves and according to his book “Race and Reunion, the Civil War in American Memory”. He describes a commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries that took place in May 1st 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina at a former planters race track where Confederates held captive union soldiers during the last years of the war. At least 257 soldiers died, many died of disease and were buried in unmarked graves.
Black residents of Charleston decided to give them a proper burial, so approximately ten days leading up to the event, roughly two dozen African-American Charlestonians reorganized the graves into rows and built a 10-foot tall white fence around them.
An archway overhead spelled out “Martyrs of the Race Course” in black letters. About 10,000 people, mostly black residents participated in the May 1st tribute, according to coverage back then in the Charleston Daily Courier and the New York Tribune. Starting at 9:00 am, about 3,000 black school children paraded around the race track holding roses and singing the union song “John Brown's Body” and were followed by adults representing the Aid Societies for Freed Black Men and Women.
Black pastors delivered sermons and led Attendees in prayer and in the singing of spirituals. James Redpath, the white director of the Freedmen's Education in the region, organized about 30 speeches by union officers, missionaries and black ministers. Participants sang patriotic songs and in the afternoon about three white and black union regiments marched around the graves and staged a drill. The New York Tribune described the tribute as a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States have never saw before the grave sites look like one mass of flowers. This was the tribute that gave birth to an American tradition. As David Blight wrote in his book, Race and Reunion, the war was over and memorial day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. Memorial day had become a national holiday in 1889 and it took a century before it was moved in 1968 to the last Monday of May-where it remains today. The freed slaves memorial day tribute, which is not well remembered, is very emblematic of the struggle that would follow as African Americans fight to be fully recognized for their contributions to American society continues to this day.
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