{"id":519,"date":"2025-05-26T19:52:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T19:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/?p=519"},"modified":"2025-05-26T19:56:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T19:56:40","slug":"before-it-was-memorial-day-we-remembered-our-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/?p=519","title":{"rendered":"Before It Was Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Before the barbecue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the beach trips and blowout sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before America made it about summer. We made it sacred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 1, 1865, Charleston, South Carolina.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Civil War had just ended. Freedom had just begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the grounds of the old Washington Race Course\u2014once a playground for the wealthy, now a burial ground for the brave\u2014over 260 Union soldiers had died in a Confederate prison camp. Their bodies tossed into a mass grave. Forgotten by the country they fought for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not forgotten by us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newly freed Black men, women, and children\u2014once enslaved on that very land\u2014came together to do what this nation would not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They dug up the bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gave them proper burials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Built a new fence around the cemetery and erected a whitewashed archway that read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMartyrs of the Race Course.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then they gathered 10,000 strong. Led by 3,000 Black children carrying armfuls of flowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black women with baskets. Black Union soldiers, marching once more, this time in peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They sang spirituals. Read Bible verses. Honored the dead with sermons, songs, and silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They celebrated the living by marching into a future that had not yet promised them anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was not just ceremony. This was testimony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a declaration that Black lives not only mattered\u2014they remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But history, as it so often does when it comes to us, got rewritten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waterloo, New York, would be credited with the \u201cfirst Memorial Day\u201d one year later, in 1866.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charleston was buried along with the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, this Memorial Day, don\u2019t just wave a flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t just light a grill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Say their names, the ones who fought for freedom. And say our names, the ones who first remembered them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were the architects of remembrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were the first to hold sacred what this country tried to ignore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We remembered before it was called Memorial Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we still should.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the barbecue. Before the beach trips and blowout sales. Before America made it about summer. We made it sacred. May 1, 1865, Charleston,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blackness","category-society"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":523,"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions\/523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackmanwrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}