jelun

I have seen this posting on FB several times recently and naturally had to check the validity of the claim.


How many of us grew up knowing that Memorial Day began with African-Americans in the ashes of the Civil War? The holiday we now call Memorial Day was first observed on May 1, 1865, in Charleston, SC, where thousands of newly freed s***es marched, prayed and laid flowers in gratitude to the fallen Civil War soldiers whose sacrifice had helped secure their freedom.
That spring, after the confederates evacuated Charleston at the end of the war, black residents cleaned the site of a mass grave of 257 union soldiers. The laborers dug out the bodies and gave the soldiers a proper burial.
That May 1, nearly 10,000 people, most of them former s***es, joined by union troops and northern white missionaries, gathered to dedicate the burial ground and honor the soldiers. Among the former s***es were 3,000 black children, like those pictured here, who would become among the first African-Americans ever permitted to go to school in the South with the opening of new Freedom Schools.
The people marched and sang and prayed. They laid flowers on the gravesite. The New York Tribune described it as “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”

This is what Snopes has to say.
http://www.snopes.com/military/memorialday.asp

bilordinary Loc: SW Washington

Snopes is for dopes!
I've found them lying before.

jelun

I have heard that said, do you remember what you caught them lying at?

samtheyank

It started in the South. In Richmond, VA, they use to decorate the graves of fallen Confederate Soldiers at Hollywood Cemetery. The tradition spread to other areas of the nation. Richmond will never receive credit because she was the defeated foe. Spoils always go to the victor. Food for thought! If the South had won the war, there would not have been a force, America, to have had the means to defeat Hitler and Tojo.

jelun

I am a bit tired, I am unable to process what you are implying about a southern win.
If I am right you are claiming that the small region made of of the southeast would have prevented the United States from being as good as it is, you think it would not have been strong without the Confederacy?
If you wanted to reverse that I might buy it. I tend to think that sooner or later those southerners living in poverty would have realized how much more they had in common with s***es than with plantation owners who didn't even want people without land to v**e.
Do you know if the Confederate constitution allowed for men without property to v**e? I know that within the US the south trailed in granting v****g rights. I don't know if they kept them in place when they seceded.

samtheyank

I don't know. I will have to do some research. The next time I drive down to Richmond, VA to visit a friend I will look into it.

I do know this and I think it should be mentioned. Only a small percetage of the people owned s***es who lived in the South. The Plantation Class was dying out and could no longer afford the upkeep of owning all those s***es. It would have eventually come to an end w/o the Civil War. When the first factory was built and established in America, s***ery begin to see its demise.

jelun

What do you suppose they saw as an alternative to owning all those s***es?
Isn't that small percentage just the same as our 1%? They managed to convince all of those that lived in poverty (same with the north) to head off to war to preserve the rich guy's way of life. There wasn't and isn't all that much that is positive in "the way of life" of many who go off to war.

Didn't we have a thread the other day that featured the statement that 45% of those Americans k**led in the Vietnam conflict were African Americans? It seems to me that this realization was what turned MLK, Jr toward the peace movement.

Poor people fighting for the benefit of the megawealthy, over and over again.

samtheyank

The same principle, but in the 19th Century.

jelun

Yup, and every time it happens the testosterone laden young'uns buy into with a nudge from the nationalistic elders.

samtheyank

I never knew this. I am always proud to learn something new. Is it possible to remember all the historical events and give everyone their proper due as Americans? When you say that this group did this and that group did that, you learn something. The something is that it was important to a lot of people and it was a way to honor and remember those who made the ultimate sacrafice.

jelun

For some reason I grew up thinking that Memorial Day was connected to WWI.
The poppies, maybe...there were still WWI vets and they were selling the poppies. It was a real treat to be walking down the street and have a uniformed vet hand one to us, knowing that my mother was giving them money to support their work.
That is one of my earliest memories of the way communities work to support each other.