May 31, 2021
How Memorial Day began and how it was transformed
By Eric Utter
Sadly, many people -- especially younger folks -- don’t even know why we celebrate Memorial Day, let alone how and where the commemoration began. It is an interesting, and moving story, indeed.
The roots of the remembrance reach back to Civil War days. As the war that took the lives of 620,000 Americans neared its end, thousands of Union soldiers, being held as prisoners of war, were placed into camps around Charleston, South Carolina. Conditions at one of these camps, a former racetrack near Charleston’s Citadel, were so bad that more than 250 prisoners died from disease and exposure. They were buried in a mass grave.
Three weeks after the Confederate surrender, on Mayst, 1865, over 1,000 recently freed slaves, accompanied by regiments of the “U.S. Colored Troops,” as well as a handful of white Charlestonians, entered the camp. They created a proper burial site for the Union dead. Then they gave readings, sang hymns, and distributed flowers around the new cemetery, and dedicated it to the “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/how_memorial_day_began_and_how_it_was_transformed.html
