Featured Event
Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. As the unofficial beginning of summer, we must never lose focus of what Memorial Day means. It’s not about beaches, picnics or auto races. Memorial Day commemorates U.S. soldiers who died while in the military service. First enacted to honor Union and Confederate soldiers following the American Civil War, it was extended after World War I to honor all Americans who have died in all wars.
Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. However, Waterloo, NY is considered the official birthplace of Memorial Day.
In Charleston, South Carolina in 1865, freedmen (freed enslaved Africans) celebrated at the Washington Race Course, today the location of Hampton Park. The site 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, freedmen exhumed the bodies from the mass grave and reinterred them in individual graves. They built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch and declared it a Union graveyard. On May 1, 1865, a crowd of up to ten thousand, mainly black residents, including 2800 children, proceeded to the location for events that included sermons, singing, and a picnic on the grounds, thereby creating the first Decoration Day-type celebration. Columbus, Mississippi at its first Decoration Day on April 25, 1866, commemorated both the Union and Confederate soldiers buried in its cemetery. Other Southern states also began their own Decoration Days remembering those who died during the War, ranging from April 26 to mid June of each year.
By 1865 the practice of decorating soldiers' graves had become widespread in many cities and towns throughout the North. Waterloo, New York declared a single day in May to be observed every year as the official day for observing those who died during the War. The first day observed was there was May 5, 1866. General John A. Logan had been impressed with how the South had honored the fallen Confederate soldiers for years. On May 5, 1868, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, issued a proclamation that "Decoration Day" should be observed nationwide. It was observed for the first time on May 30, 1868 when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.
The first state to officially recognize the holiday was Michigan in 1871. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days, until after World War I when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war.