The musical essay for Memorial Day connects the national holiday with May Day, because the dating of the two holidays once coincided. The very first commemoration of Memorial Day was actually on May 1, 1865, when it was called “Decoration Day.” It was commemorated in the strewing of flowers on the graves of Civil War soldiers.
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Thematic Images for Decoration Day
"Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays.... The grim cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into peach blossoms." ~Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The very first commemoration of Memorial Day was actually on May Day—May 1, 1865—when it was called “Decoration Day,” commemorated in profuse flowers. The first known national observance of Decoration Day was on May 5, 1866. Memorial Day, originally known as "Decoration Day," because it was a time set aside to honor the nation's Civil War dead by decorating their graves. Memorial Day was first observed in 1868, as two women in Columbus, Mississippi placed flowers on both Confederate & Union graves. It was first widely observed on May 30, 1868, to honor the sacrifices of Civil War soldiers, by proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of former sailors and soldiers.
The very first Memorial Day was commemorated by African Americans.
The first Memorial Day, May 1, 1865, was called "Decoration Day," which was observed by former slaves at the Washington Race Course in Charleston, South Carolina to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They dugup the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 black children where they marched, sang and celebrated.
Memorial Day Massacre
As part of the Little Steel Strike of 1937, workers struck against Ohio-based Republic Steel for better treatment and working conditions and higher wages. Republic had a mill located on Chicago’s Southeast Side. Company management planned to break this strike with replacement workers and, ultimately, violence. On Sunday, May 30, 1937, striking Republic workers and their allies attempted to set up a picket line in the prairie in front of the mill. Chicago police, who were already on the scene, responded with guns and clubs, injuring roughly one hundred people and killing ten men. Officers claimed they responded to violence with violence to protect the mill and the country from "communists." A congressional investigation showed the claims of worker violence to be false, and only a small fraction of those there that day held radical left-wing political beliefs.
Workers' Memorial Day: Marches & Demonstrations
