THE ROOTS OF MEMORIAL DAY

Learn more about the early beginnings of Decoration Day - May 30, 1868 - which was predated by an event on May 1, 1865; when 10,000 mostly former slaves, led by 2,800 black children, marched in celebration on the streets of Charleston, South Carolina while honoring the lives of those who had died for their freedom. This occurred after a 2 week long project when some men from African American Churches in the area had exhumed the bodies of 257 Union Soldiers from a mass grave and had given each of them a proper burial.