I'm sure this is common knowledge but just in case you missed it, here it is: Memorial Day had an interesting start:
The first widely-publicized observance of a Memorial Day-type observance after the Civil War was in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. During the war, Union soldiers who were prisoners of war had been held at the Hampton Park Race Course in Charleston; at least 257 Union prisoners died there and were hastily buried in unmarked graves. Together with teachers and missionaries, black residents of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony in 1865, which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers. The freedmen cleaned up and landscaped the burial ground, building an enclosure and an arch labeled "Martyrs of the Race Course." Nearly 10,000 people, mostly freedmen, gathered on May 1 to commemorate the war dead. Involved were about 3,000 school children, newly enrolled in freedmen's schools, as well as mutual aid societies, Union troops, black ministers and white northern missionaries. Most brought flowers to lay on the burial field. Today the site is remembrance celebration would come to be called the "First Decoration Day" in the North.
Having served as a USMC officer I have mixed feelings about how we deal with this now. Read on below for more.
My own experience as a member of our armed forces is not that untypical. I needed a way to go to college and being from the working class my high school guidance counselors did not inform me about college scholarships until it was too late for the good ones. They were glad to sign me up for a NROTC regular scholarship.
Luckily I never saw combat. Too many who died in combat were there for similar reasons as mine. Military service served some need. Seldom were the war dead representative of the class of people who make war happen.
So as we honor those who died it is good to put things into political perspective. War is a way the rich get richer and they care little about the cost in human life.
There is a strange irony about the fact that the holiday may have started in the south with an African American community honoring dead Union soldiers.
David W. Blight described the day:
This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution
I would be much happier honoring the dead if were not for the way the warmongers have taken over the holiday. It is often a celebration of war as much as a remembrance of the dead.