Where and when Memorial Day started has been widely debated for more than a century, but free black people in Charleston likely held the first observance in 1865 and the man recognized as the holiday’s founder has South Carolina connections.
The holiday on May 25, the last Monday in May, was Decoration Day for a century, until Congress changed the name to Memorial Day in 1967. Many folks used “Memorial Day” before the official change — and some continued to use “Decoration Day” after the change.
Free black people in Charleston “honored the graves of Union prisoners of war” (National Park Service) on May 1, 1865, according to Yale University historian David W. Blight. The prisoners had been in wretched conditions at Washington Race Course and Jockey Club. The bodies were re-buried from a mass grave.
The Charleston event, described as the first known celebration, was covered by the New York Tribune, less than 30 days after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
Carbondale, Illinois, where I was a newspaper reporter early in my career, was among other communities claiming the first observance. I recall covering Decoration Day observances in Jackson County, the birthplace of John Alexander Logan, the originator of the holiday.
After the Civil War, Logan was the elected national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of Civil War veterans, similar to the American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). Logan’s General Order No. 11 (March 3, 1868) set May 30 as a national holiday “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country.”
Decoration Day was first observed — 5,000 people attended — at Arlington National Cemetery on May 30, 1868. More than 20,000 graves, Confederate and Union. More than 620,000 soldiers died in the Civil War. In 1868, observances were recorded at 183 cemeteries in 27 states, illustrating the tremendous national impact of the war and the significance of remembrance.
