Before the barbecue.
Before the beach trips and blowout sales.
Before America made it about summer. We made it sacred.
May 1, 1865, Charleston, South Carolina.
The Civil War had just ended. Freedom had just begun.
On the grounds of the old Washington Race Course—once a playground for the wealthy, now a burial ground for the brave—over 260 Union soldiers had died in a Confederate prison camp. Their bodies tossed into a mass grave. Forgotten by the country they fought for.
But not forgotten by us.
Newly freed Black men, women, and children—once enslaved on that very land—came together to do what this nation would not.
They dug up the bodies.
Gave them proper burials.
Built a new fence around the cemetery and erected a whitewashed archway that read:
“Martyrs of the Race Course.”
Then they gathered 10,000 strong. Led by 3,000 Black children carrying armfuls of flowers.
Black women with baskets. Black Union soldiers, marching once more, this time in peace.
They sang spirituals. Read Bible verses. Honored the dead with sermons, songs, and silence.
They celebrated the living by marching into a future that had not yet promised them anything.
This was not just ceremony. This was testimony.
This was a declaration that Black lives not only mattered—they remembered.
But history, as it so often does when it comes to us, got rewritten.
Waterloo, New York, would be credited with the “first Memorial Day” one year later, in 1866.
Charleston was buried along with the truth.
It took over a century for historians like David Blight to unearth this story, hidden in dusty archives and forgotten newspapers. But we always knew. In our bones. In our memory.
So, this Memorial Day, don’t just wave a flag.
Don’t just light a grill.
Say their names, the ones who fought for freedom. And say our names, the ones who first remembered them.
We were the architects of remembrance.
We were the first to hold sacred what this country tried to ignore.
We remembered before it was called Memorial Day.
And we still should.
