HISTORY OF MEMORIAL DAY IN THE UNITED SNAKES OF AMERIKKKA

On this SPECIAL EDITION of Shabaka's Blacc Experience Enhanced, we will be having an open mic discussion on the history of Memorial Day otherwise known as Decoration Day which was holiday created for Blacc Veterans after the Civil War.

What are the holiday's origins? The holiday stems from the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members — both Union and Confederate — between 1861 and 1865.

Whatever its inception, historians agree that the first widely held commemoration was in 1868, when Gen. John A. Logan, the commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans, called for a national holiday to remember the Civil War dead

Official Birthplace Declared In 1966, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo, N.Y., the “birthplace” of Memorial Day. There, a ceremony on May 5, 1866, honored local Page 2 veterans who had fought in the Civil War. Businesses closed and residents flew flags at half-staff.

According to Blight’s 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, a commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries took place on May 1, 1865, in Charleston, S.C., at a former planters’ racetrack where Confederates held captured Union soldiers during the last year of the war. At least 257 prisoners died, many of disease, and were buried in unmarked graves, so black residents of Charleston decided to give them a proper burial. In the approximately 10 days leading up to the event, roughly two dozen African American Charlestonians reorganized the graves into rows and built a 10-foot-tall white fence around them. An archway overhead spelled out “Martyrs of the Race Course” in black letters.

This episode Season 7 Episode 348 is for those 18 years or older