As we celebrate Memorial Day, WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, reminds us of one of the early moments when people came together to honor those who lost their lives in war.
Today’s the Monday of Memorial Day weekend, a day off for many of us, and also, here in the South at least, the unofficial first day of summer.
Memorial Day dates back to right after the Civil War, but the history is muddled. There were various small observances in towns across the country, and those slowly merged into more widespread commemorations. It wasn’t until 1971 that Memorial Day became a federal holiday.
This morning I’d like to remember one particular event that is part of Memorial Day’s origin story.
It happened in Charleston on May 1,1865, less than two months after the end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln. There was an old horse-racing track in Charleston where captured Union soldiers had been held during the war. At least 257 of them died there. They were buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.
So after the war ended, the Black population of Charleston set out to honor the sacrifice of the Union soldiers who helped set them free. They exhumed the bodies from the mass grave and gave them proper burials. They built a fence around the new cemetery.
And then, on May 1, they held a parade at the old racetrack. Some reports say as many as 10,000 people came — most of them newly free Black Charlestonians. There were songs and speeches and scripture readings. And then there was a picnic.
You may know that many Southern states created their own Confederate memorial days to honor the 258,000 Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. In three states, Confederate Memorial Day is still an official holiday: Alabama, Mississippi … and South Carolina.
It speaks to South Carolina’s tangled role in American history that it is one of the few places left that officially honors the Confederate dead, while at the same time being one of the first places where residents honored the Union dead.
We can never see inside the hearts of all those Confederate soldiers who died for a lost cause. Surely some of them did not believe in it.
There have always been arguments in this country about who’s a true patriot and who’s not. One way to think about it is this: A patriot is someone who tries to bring the country together instead of pulling it apart.
May we one day learn from our history, and when we fight, may it be for something worth fighting for.
Tommy Tomlinson’s "On My Mind" column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org.It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.
