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time.com
According to Blight’s 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, a commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries took place on May 1, 1865, in Charleston, S.C., at a former planters’ racetrack where Confederates held captured Union soldiers during the last year of the war. At least 257 prisoners died, many of disease, and were buried in unmarked graves, so black residents of Charleston decided to give them a proper burial.
An April 1865 photo of the graves of Union soldiers buried at the race course-turned-Confederate-prison where historians believe the earliest Memorial Day ceremony took place.
Civil war photographs, 1861-1865, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN
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The Overlooked Black History of Memorial Day
The Overlooked Black History of Memorial Day
Historians like the Pulitzer Prize winner David Blight have tried to raise awareness of freed slaves who decorated soldiers' graves in 1865
time.com
An April 1865 photo of the graves of Union soldiers buried at the race course-turned-Confederate-prison where historians believe the earliest Memorial Day ceremony took place.
Civil war photographs, 1861-1865, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
BY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN
...
