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| The first Memorial Day or Decoration Day was apparently held in Charleston by freed men and women of color, May 1865, when they went to "decorate" the mass graves of mostly white Union soldiers dead in the local POW camps in love and respect. Via Damario Solomon-Simmons. |
I posted this picture a while back, in
June 2015, but it seems especially relevant today, when the Memorial Day commemoration
feels so overwhelmed by the centenary of the Tulsa massacre of 1921 unless
they're brought together like this:
Hard on this Memorial Day not to think about those Black World War I veterans who fought to defend Greenwood before the Tulsa government summoned vigilantes and sent in ground & aerial troops to murder them, their families and neighbors and put the survivors in internment camps. pic.twitter.com/PEDFzZiil4
— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) May 31, 2021
Or in the idea of Nikole Hannah-Jones's father, who enlisted in the Army in 1962, and as a grown man and householder always flew the American flag in his front yard:
