Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday. It’s also the unofficial start of summer for many of us, especially for kids who will shortly be out of school for the year. It is observed on the last Monday of May, May 31st this year.
Memorial Day used to be known as Decoration Day. We call it “memorial” because it’s a day to remember. Specifically, it’s a day to remember the men and women who have died in military service. There are a lot of different stories about it’s roots, but commonly it’s believed to have been started as an effort to honor Union soldiers in the American Civil War that became a more widely observed holiday after World War I.
The timing of Memorial Day grew out of Reunification Day – the day the north and the south officially reunified after the Civil War. After the Civil War ended, many communities on both sides started setting aside a day to honor their dead in the days around the anniversary of reunification.
Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo, NY, the official birth place of Memorial Day in 1966. The holiday was officially honored for the first time in 1868, and the first state to officially recognize it was New York in 1873. Professor David Blight of Yale University believes the first actual celebration of the day was in Charleston, South Carolina. After emancipation, according to Blight, a large group of black residents took it upon themselves to give union soldiers who had been buried there in a mass grave a proper burial and create a proper cemetery for them. It took two weeks. After they had reburied the soldiers, the former slaves held a march and rally to honor the dead. This ceremony was largely forgotten until Blight took interest.
