The Memorial Day story they never taught us.

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]The first Memorial Day actually was created by African Americans celebrating [music] their freedom in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

[00:00:08]The story [music] was just almost unbelievable when I first read it. On May 1st, 1865, the Civil War had ended, just ended. People gathered on the old planters horse track, the race track in Charleston, [music] and they held this extraordinary parade.

[00:00:23]In the last 6 to 8 months of the war, the Confederates had converted the infield of that race track into [music] an open-air prison, and about 260 Union soldiers had died. On May 1st, about 10,000 [music] people marched around the old planters race course, led by uh some 2 or 3,000 black children, carrying armloads of roses and flowers, and singing John Brown's body, followed by black women, black men, and then Union troops. And they marched around the course, and then they gathered in the cemetery that had been created by local [music] black workmen, and they heard preaching from five black ministers, according to this article. These are the [music] freed people of Charleston paying tribute to the Union dead.

[00:01:08]That's the first [music] Memorial Day.