The Wikipedia entry for Memorial Day claims that the holiday “was first enacted by formerly enslaved Africans to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War . . . ” Since black people were generally treated as second class citizens in the North as well as in the South for at least a hundred years after the Civil War, this sounded fishy to me. Sure enough, the “official source” of information on Memorial Day, the U.S. government’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs, makes no mention of “formerly enslaved Africans,” but it does say that the first “Decoration Day,” as it used to be called, was probably enacted in 1866 by women in Columbus, Mississippi to honor the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers who were killed at the nearby Battle of Shiloh during the war.
The first recognition of Decoration Day by the federal government was in 1868 at Arlington Mansion, the former home of Robert E. Lee that was confiscated by the Lincoln administration during the war and turned into a cemetery. Participants are said to have sung hymns and placed “flowers on both Union and Confederate graves . . .” according to the Dept. of Veterans’ Affairs.
