The forgotten Civil War roots of Memorial Day

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00][Music] But the first major formal practice of what we've come to call Memorial Day was in Charleston, South Carolina on May 1st, 1865. Charleston, of course, the seedbed of secession, held out to the bitter end. It wasn't evacuated by Confederate forces until February of 1865. But when the Confederates evacuated and the Union army moved in, pretty much the white population of Charleston left and the people who were left were the free people. In the midst of these ruins, the black folks of Charleston got themselves organized. They planned various little commemorations and celebrations. The biggest celebration though that they planned was at the Planters Racecourse, the horse track.

[00:00:54]In the last year of the war, the Confederates converted this racecourse into a prison for Union soldiers. And about 260 Union soldiers died of disease and exposure in the infield in this open air prison and were buried in a mass grave behind the grand stand of the racetrack. And the black folks reenterred all the dead in proper graves. They named nearly none of them because there were no dog tags. And they built around it a huge fence, whitewashed it, and they built an archway into the compound. And over the archway, they painted the inscription, Martyrs of the Racecourse.

[00:01:43]And then on May 1st when they had this completed, they held a parade on the racetrack. Estimated at about 10,000 people by newspaper correspondents who witnessed it and covered it. It was led off by about 3,000 black children carrying arm loads of flowers and we're told singing John Brown's body, then followed by black women and black men and then by contingents of Union infantry, black and white. They all paraded around the racetrack. Five black preachers read from scripture. a children's choir sang America the Beautiful, the Star Spangled Banner, and quote unquote several spirituals. And they dedicated the cemetery of these Union dead. And then they broke up and went into the infield of the racetrack and did what most of us do on Memorial Day.

[00:02:45]They held picnics.

[00:02:49]And that is one of, if not the most important origin of what we've come to know as Memorial Day.