Mastodawn

Mobility Matters Bham May 27

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco

On May 1, 1865, in the 1st spring of freedom, Black Charlestonians held a procession to honor Union soldiers buried in a mass grave.
They came with roses. With hymns. With children.
It was the 1st Memorial Day.
But America gave the credit to others & buried the memory.
#MemorialDay #History #Histodons #Politics #photography #blackandwhite
#blackmastodon
#blackandwhitephotography
1/21
Image: Black American Civil War Memorial, Spirit of Freedom statue by Ed Hamilton 1997, NPS, Washington DC.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

It happened in Charleston, South Carolina, in the first spring of emancipation. On May 1, 1865, ten thousand Black men, women, and children gathered at the old Washington Race Course, a once-opulent symbol of antebellum wealth that the Confederacy had turned into a prison camp for Union soldiers.
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Image: April 1865 photo of the graves of Union soldiers buried at the race course-turned-Confederate-prison where historians believe the first Memorial Day took place. Library of Congress.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

They gathered not to celebrate a battle or to protest an injustice, but to bury the dead. In the waning weeks of the war, 257 Union prisoners had died there—of disease, of neglect, of despair—and been cast into a mass grave behind the grandstand. Now, the people who had once been enslaved came to raise them up.
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Image: Frances Benjamin Johnston, Students Saluting the Flag at the Whittier Primary School, circa 1899-1900.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

They came with roses. With sermons. With songs. With schoolchildren—three thousand of them, marching in lines, each bearing a flower, each humming or singing the old abolitionist hymn, “John Brown’s Body.” Black pastors led prayers. Black troops stood in salute.
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Image: The plaque in Hampton Park commemorating the first Memorial Day was dedicated in 2010.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

A wooden arch was built above the burial ground, and across it, in bold lettering, someone had painted: Martyrs of the Race Course. And then, after hours of solemn ritual and music and testimony, the graves were decorated. They were not left bare again.
5/21

Image: Memorial Market in Hampton Park, Charleston, South Carolina

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

It was, as one newspaper would later write, “a procession of friends and mourners such as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.” But it was more than a procession. It was a declaration. A statement of historical authorship.
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Image: A sketch of Union Cemetery–today Hampton Park –appeared in Harper’s Weekly magazine on May 18, 1867.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

For the Black citizens of Charleston—newly freed, barely weeks into their emancipation—had laid claim not just to the bodies in those graves, but to the memory of the war itself. They had buried the Union dead with honor. And in so doing, they had given birth to what would one day be called Memorial Day.
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Image: Black American laborer between 1861-1865, known as contraband. These men worked as teamsters for the Union army.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

And yet, as so often happens when the contributions of Black Americans intersect with the making of national memory, the record was altered. The act of founding—the first Memorial Day—was obscured, reattributed, covered over by another version.

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Image: General John A. Logan, Commander and Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. Given official credit for establishing the first Memorial Day, May 30, 1868.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

It would be white women in Columbus, Georgia, or Richmond, Virginia, who would be credited in the national record. It would be the Confederacy’s widows who were remembered for decorating graves.

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Image: Daughters of the Confederacy unveiling the "Southern Cross" monument at Arlington, VA, 1914.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

The obscuring of the May 1 procession was not accidental. It was the result of a campaign—deliberate, organized, successful. That campaign had a name: the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

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Image: Members of the Margaret Jones Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy are pictured in Waynesboro, GA circa 1900.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

And just as they built monuments to generals and named schools after secessionists, they also built a history—one where Black agency was minimized, and where white loss was sacralized. Decoration Day was theirs, they insisted—not born of Black mourning, but of white grief.

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Image: The Lanier of Glynn Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, pictured in 1979, decorate a monument in Brantley County dedicated to Confederate soldiers who died of yellow fever during the Civil War.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

As textbooks and civic rituals adopted their version, the memory of Charleston’s Black commemorators faded. What remained was the myth.

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Image: The carving on Stone Mountain depicts the Confederate icons Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Commissioned by the president of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

3 years before the date Americans today are taught to mark as the origin of Memorial Day, the formerly enslaved had already done what the nation would only later begin: honor the dead, grieve the cost, lay claim to the republic’s moral promise.

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Image: Clubhouse at the race course where Union soldiers were held prisoner.Civil war photographs, 1861-1865, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

That their story was forgotten is no surprise. As David Blight has shown in Race and Reunion, the erasure was part of a larger pattern. From the very beginning, the freedom struggle of Black Americans—their courage, their initiative, their leadership—was not just resisted. It was rewritten.

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Image: An Alfred Waud illustration of the.Union soldiers cemetery known as "Martyrs of the Race course" in Charleston, S.C.Morgan collection of Civil War drawings at the Library of Congress.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

And yet, the flowers were laid. The names were sung. The procession marched. The record may have been altered, but the memory endured.

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Image: memorial day for age with black Americans sometime in the early 20th century.Library of Congress

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

Primary Sources

“Decoration Day of May 1865.” New-York Tribune, May 1865.

“Union Soldiers Cemetery, ‘Martyrs of the Race Course,’ Charleston, S.C.” Harper’s Weekly, May 18, 1867.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.21659/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

National Archives and Records Administration. “Civil War Prisoner of War Records, 1861–1865.”

https://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/resources
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Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

More Primary Sources

Archives and Records Administration. “Records of the Field Offices for the State of South Carolina, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872.”

https://nmaahc.si.edu/freedmens-bureau/record/fbs-1662423774659-1662424690831-0?utm_source=chatgpt.com

“Letters and Diaries from the Civil War.” University of Florida Digital Collections.

https://pkyonge.uflib.ufl.edu/learn-about-collections/digital-collections/letters-and-diaries-from-the-civil-war/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Blight, David W. “The First Decoration Day.” Newark Star Ledger, April 27, 2015.

https://www.davidwblight.com/public-history/2015/4/27/the-first-decoration-day-newark-star-ledger?utm_source=chatgpt.com
17/21

Records of the Field Offices for the State of South... | National Museum of African American History and Culture

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

Secondary Sources

Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Cox, Karen L. Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003.
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Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

More Secondary Sources

Blight, David W. “Forgetting Why We Remember.” The New York Times, May 29, 2011.

Miller Jr., Edward A. Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839–1915. Columbia, SC: University of SC Press, 1995.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Gannon, Barbara. The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic. Chapel Hill: University of NC Press, 2011.
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Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

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

http://www.davidwblight.com/public-history/2015/4/27/the-first-decoration-day-newark-star-ledger

https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-119/lecture-19

https://www.cem.va.gov/history/Memorial-Day-History.asp

https://chsasalh.com/2024/05/23/decoration-day-charlestons-gullah-community-honoring-the-fallen-first-memorial-day/#:~:text=Freed%20Black%20residents%20of%20Charleston,dignitaries%20and%20formerly%20enslaved%20people.

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

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

More Website Resources

https://www.history.com/news/memorial-day-civil-war-slavery-charleston

https://naacplosangeles.org/news/f/naacpla-memorial-day-in-usa-founded-by-blacks-in-1865?blogcategory=Los+Angeles#:~:text=Near%20a%20reflecting%20pool%20at,the%20South%20at%20the%20time.

https://time.com/5836444/black-memorial-day/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/26/contested-confederate-roots-memorial-day/

https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2023/05/25/freed-slaves-started-first-memorial-day-in-the-us/

21/21

HISTORY

The HISTORY Channel - Geschichte erleben! The HISTORY Channel ist der deutschsprachige Pay-TV-Sender für spannende Dokumentationen und macht die Faszination von Menschen und Ereignissen täglich greifbar!

HISTORY

@Deglassco I grew up under this carving. Pretty crazy place. Was klan meeting ground when I was a kid

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

@ATLeagle indeed. Pretty much the experience of many Southerners—including me.

Mathias ❄️🐺🐶 is proudly

@Deglassco Yet another incredibly important piece of history we're never taught in school, but absolutely should. I avoided hitting like on some of the following posts not for the quality of the information, but because the daughters of the confederacy (I'm even not giving them the dignity of capitalization) and everyone like them make me want to hurl, as does the white supremacist revisionist history that these traitors were responsible for. Fuck them all, and thank you as always for the insightful threads.

Nicole Parsons May 27

https://tminstituteldf.org/project-2025-threats-to-education/

The 6 dynasties behind Project 2025 deliberately torpedo education so no child, black or white, learns the lessons of the Civil War.

https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/how-project-2025-would-devastate-public-education

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2024/07/13/what-does-project-2025-actually-plan-for-education/

https://www.newsweek.com/project-2025-full-list-organizations-proposals-1923240

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/project-2025-and-education-a-lot-of-bad-ideas-some-more-actionable-than-others/

1. We're all human beings
2. We all deserve human rights & dignity
3. Slavery is an abomination that should be ended everywhere forever
4. If united, America could be an unbeatable beacon for democracy & the earth

1/

Nicole Parsons May 27

2/

https://www.desmog.com/2024/10/25/project-2025-trump-mapped-how-6-billionaire-family-fortunes-fund-climate-denial/

Bradley, Koch, Coors, Scaife/Mellon, Seid, and Uihlein -- these billionaires have waged war on history & democracy for long enough.
https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/14/project-2025-billionaire-donor-heritage-foundation-donald-trump-jd-vance-charles-koch-peter-coors/

It is time that they were stopped.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/project-2025-contributors-trump-administration-picks-1235175351/

https://www.levernews.com/dark-money-just-got-darker-wall-street-helped-fund-project-2025/

Their cancer has metastasized to Musk, Ellison, Thiel, and Mercer.

https://truthout.org/articles/millions-of-taxpayer-dollars-have-subsidized-project-2025-and-climate-denial/

Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025

Unraveling a $130 million web of climate denial, political extremism, and Trump campaign ties.

DeSmog

Sablebadger May 26

@Deglassco Another excellent article, thank you again for your efforts and research.

The Daughters really were a menace, and their impact is far to great. Let's erase them instead.

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

@Sablebadger yes, they did a lot of damage to the historical record and they still are trying to do more damage. Thank you for reading it.

@Deglassco
📌

Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco May 26

Roy -- the dull one May 27

Thanks for this post. Not only does it inform us about a beautiful moment in the history of the nation, but also it shows us a truly beautiful work of sculpture.

Not a towering monument to racist revisionism, but an engaging tribute to real black men serving America with honor.

Peter Link 🍉🇨🇺🇵🇸🐧May 27

Thanks for posting this. It inspired me to websearch a bit and I found this article from Essence.

The Often Overlooked Black Origins Of Memorial Day - Essence | Essence — https://www.essence.com/news/black-origins-memorial-day/

The Often Overlooked Black Origins Of Memorial Day

The initial commemoration of Memorial Day is often disputed. However, it's believed that one commemoration from fallen Black solidiers took place in Charleston, South Carolina, before any others around the nation.

Essence

jonathanpeterson May 27

@Deglassco Memorial Day has become the kickoff to the summer. An extra long weekend to head to the beach, throw neighborhood parties, watch sports, drink and eat too much. It originally Decoration Day to remember those who died in service to our country, but also worth remembering those who STARTED the tradition - freed slaves who gathered in Charleston to honor slain Union prisoners of war. Thank-you Dr. Glassco for the reminder and the knowledge.