This week we celebrate Memorial Day. Memorial Day is a day set aside as a national holiday for honoring those military personnel who died while serving our country in the U.S. Armed Forces. Memorial Day differs fromVeterans Day and Armed Forces Day in that it is a day for honoring our fallen heroes from past wars whereas Veterans Day honors all those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces and Armed Forces Day honors those who are currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
How did the holiday originate? According to the website for the United States Library of Congress, “Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers even before the Civil War’s end.
Records show that by 1865, Mississippi,Virginia, and South Carolina all had precedents for Memorial Day.” The earliest observance on record came on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina when a group of formerly enslaved Black adults and children held a parade of 10,000 people to honor 257 fallen Union soldiers. Thereafter the Ladies’ Memorial Association encouraged the decorating of the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers throughout the southern states.
