Lest We Forget

I usually think of Memorial Day simply as a day off and the beginning summer. Instead I should spend some time reflecting on the enormous sacrifice that hundreds of thousands of men and women have made with their lives fighting in wars both domestic and foreign.

Below from Wikipedia are few things I never knew about Memorial Day, including its roots to the Civil War and freed slaves...

• Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service. First enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War (it is celebrated near the day of reunification after the civil war), it was expanded after World War I to include American casualties of any war or military action.

• Some historians cite the first memorial day observanace as occurring on May 1, 1865 by liberated slaves at the Washington Race Course in Charleston, South Carolina. The site had been used as a temporary Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who died in captivity. The freed slaves disinterred the dead Union soldiers from the mass grave and properly reburied them with individual graves, built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch, declaring it a Union graveyard. On May 30, 1868, the freed slaves returned to the graveyard with flowers they had picked from the countryside and decorated the individual gravesites, thereby creating the first Decoration Day. Thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers paraded from the area, followed by patriotic singing and a picnic.

• The alternative name of "Memorial Day" was first used in 1882. It did not become more common until after World War II, and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967. On June 28, 1968, the United States Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which moved three holidays from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a convenient three-day weekend. The change moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. The law took effect at the federal level in 1971.