Charleston Claims First Memorial Day Celebration

/Home/Historic Charleston

Charleston Claims First Memorial Day Celebration
May 31, 2010
ABC News 4


Charleston, SC - Where did the tradition of Memorial Day get started? According to the City of Charleston, it started here in the lowcountry.

Donald West is helping re-enact a moment in history that was lost for more than one hundred years, the first Memorial Day celebration. Monday he and several other members of the Charleston community marched the same ground freed slaves circled in a parade to honor the fallen on May 1st 1865.

“It had the kind of following then that one would think would be remembered for years and decades but it faded away,” West said.

The truth was buried for over a century and now the history revealed by Yale professor and historian David Blight.

“The story of the first declaration day vanished and it wasn't until just ten years ago, I found the story in an archive,” Blight said.

Buried deep in a pile of civil war archives in the Harvard library, Blight unveiled the truth. Hampton Park, once called the Washington Race Course was the resting place for almost 200 union soldiers.

“They died a hideous death in open air prisons,” Blight said.

Blight says their bodies were dumped in a grave pile here until a group of African Americans re- buried them properly and marched to honor their sacrifice and celebrate the end of a war that won them their freedom, marking the first Memorial Day. The bodies were later moved to a National Cemetery in Beaufort.

“It was founded here. It was founded in a parade by African American former slaves commemorating the union dead who had died for their freedom,” Blight said.

The City of Charleston marked that historical day with a plaque here at Hampton Park, for a day they say was the first true Memorial Day.

City leaders like Mayor Joe Riley (web | news | bio) , hoping this reminder reveals a faded past and sets the record straight.

While the city recognizes Hampton Park as the first Memorial Day site, the nation does not. We're told it would first have to become a National Historical Landmark, authorized by Congress.