your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

MEMORIAL DAY was NOT created to celebrate all US veterans. it was created to remember the +600,000 Americans killed during the Civil War.

there were no fixed federal dates for #MemorialDay and states & localities had their own; but the earliest recorded mass commemoration was organized by formerly enslaved African Americans:

“The Forgotten Black History of How Memorial Day Started” https://time.com/5836444/black-memorial-day/

never forget today is about the #CivilWar against the slave-owning #oligarchy

The Overlooked Black History of Memorial Day

Historians have tried to raise awareness of the freed slaves who decorated soldiers' graves in 1865, but their story is often overlooked.

Time
May 26, 2025 at 2:20pmWeb
Show threadyour auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦May 26, 2025

PS: the #federal Parks Services has a page recognizing the South Carolina event as the first #MemorialDay, aka #DecorationDay

❝ …one of the earliest recorded observations of the holiday indisputably took place in Charleston, South Carolina, in the closing days of the Civil War… On May 1, 1865, the freed people of Charleston gathered at the old racetrack to decorate the graves of 257 Union prisoners of war who had been hastily buried by the retreating Confederate army.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/african-american-memorial-day.htm

African American Contributions to Memorial Day (U.S. National Park Service)

Show threadOrrock LXXXVI XLVIIMay 26, 2025
@blogdiva They just can’t stand to think they lost.
Show threadKevin in AlaskaMay 26, 2025
@blogdiva imagine if John Brown’s Body was the official song of Memorial Day
Show threadKarl AuerbachMay 26, 2025

@blogdiva Although the tune below is usually aimed at Juneteenth, it is an apt comment on the fact that the Civil War was only a partial, and often weak, cure.

(By-the-way, our legacy of slavery still reverberates - which is why I am in favor of reparations, even if only symbolically partial restitution for centuries of economic loss, for all of our people who have suffered racial discrimination, even if not actual slavery. Perhaps enacting a livable Universal Basic Income would also help.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJM02Ah_RF0

Saskatchewan (Juneteenth)

YouTube