Although Waterloo, New York, is officially recognized as having celebrated the first Memorial Day in 1866 it has well over 20 rivals for the title, and all of them — even Waterloo — rely on evidence that’s at least somewhat sketchy. For example, Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, cites an 1864 gathering of women to mourn the deaths of soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg. Carbondale, Illinois, claims two markers in its cemeteries as well as a parade led by Major General John A. Logan (more on him in a moment) as proof that it held the first annual celebration. There are towns named Columbus in Georgia and Mississippi with competing claims. Clearly, the holiday’s long evolution makes it unclear where exactly it began or how it began. But there are two unambiguous facts about Memorial Day. One is we know the forerunner to Memorial Day. And the second is we know that southern states dial back their observance of Memorial Day. As I will point out in this video, these two facts are tightly linked. Hi, my name is Denis Raczkowski and I am a real estate broker, longtime North Carolina resident and business owner in Emerald Isle, NC with a passion for all things involving the Crystal Coast. But I was born and raised in New Jersey where we took our Memorial Day commemoration quite seriously. We had a parade down Main Street, a parade filled with marching bands and marching military. The sidewalks were lined with spectators who followed the fire engines to the cemetery to hear speeches honoring those men and women who died defending our country. Then, we listened to the Indianapolis 500 (who even heard of NASCAR) while we ate hamburgers and hot dogs off the grill.
When I came south to attend Duke University, I discovered to my surprise that Memorial Day is a rather insignificant event here in North Carolina and all over the south. Search for Memorial Day events and short of the NASCAR Cup Series Coca-Cola 600 even google comes up empty. And why is that? Well it all starts with that darn Major General Logan I mentioned briefly above. You see, he was the head of an organization called the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a group composed exclusively of UNION Civil War veterans. Major Logan and his group found themselves attending increasing numbers of ceremonies all over the north venerating fallen UNION soldiers during and after the Civil War and, finally in 1868, tired of all that travel, he proposed May 30 to be Decoration Day, a Day set aside for covering the graves of fallen UNION soldiers with flowers. The date was chosen, the story goes because May 30 is a day on which no Civil War battles were fought and plenty of flowers would be in bloom by then. On that first Decoration Day, the future president UNION General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington Cemetery, which held the remains of UNION soldiers and which was situated on land the US government seized from General Robert E Lee, commander of the Confederate Army. Afterwards some 5,000 spectators decorated the graves of 20,000 UNION Civil War soldiers buried there. Indeed, it was not until after 1900 when Congress authorized it that confederate war dead were reinterred in what is now called section 16 of Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1888, Decoration Day became a federal holiday. But back then, holidays applied only to the small number of government employees in Washington, D.C. And so, while Decoration Day was not an official national holiday, by 1890, it had been made a state holiday by each and every Northern state. Southern states, however, continued to ignore Decoration Day and continued to venerate and embrace separate Confederate days of remembrance until after World War I. Indeed, several southern states continue to honor the Confederate dead with a holiday: January 19 in Texas; April 22 in Alabama and Georgia; April 26 in Florida; April 29 in Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. It amazes me to see how many people chose to live in the past in this country.
As the United States moved on from the Civil War to participate in other armed conflicts, particularly World War I, the meaning of Decoration Day also broadened to include honoring all soldiers who died in the line of duty. By the end of World War II, ‘Decoration’ Day had morphed into ‘Memorial’ Day in the minds of many. In 1968, a law made the name change official. It also moved the newly christened Memorial Day to its modern date: the last Monday of May. This law, called the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, came into effect in 1971 and created the annual Memorial Day weekends that Americans know and love today, but it also angered many Americans who were uncomfortable with the shift in focus from remembrance to enjoying time off. While the states eventually fell in line, many veterans groups continue to voice dissent on this issue.
My mother, however, blamed me for the shift from remembrance to enjoying time off. You see, in 1970 I entered a peace float in my town’s Memorial Day Parade. All I wanted to do was keep from feeding more troops into the meat grinder otherwise known as the Vietnam war. The goal was to reduce the number of soldiers dying in rice paddies and maybe, just maybe making Memorial Day less about the dead and more about the living. My float did garner attention, some good and some bad and whether by coincidence or correlation, future parades in my home town were greatly scaled back.
Regardless of the reason, Memorial Day 2023 will occur on Monday, May 29. Some large cities like New York, Chicago and Washington DC and many small towns across the United States, with the notable exception of the South, will host solemn Memorial Day parades, filled with military pageantry and members of veterans’ organizations. In addition to parades, many Americans will also take the time to visit cemeteries and memorials. Some people will wear a red poppy in remembrance of those fallen in war—a tradition that began with a poem written by John McRae about the second battle of Ypres during WWI. The poem is called “In Flanders Fields" and in it McRae channels the voices of the fallen soldiers buried under those hardy red flowers.
But you won’t experience many solemn Memorial Day events or parades here in North Carolina or anywhere along the Crystal Coast. And it all goes back to that darn General Logan and his group of UNION Civil War veterans and the subsequent morphing of the UNION inspired Decoration Day into Memorial Day. Here, Memorial Day mostly has evolved into that long kind of 3 or 4 day weekend that Americans have come to enjoy. A weekend filled with people shopping or getting out of Dodge to visit the Crystal Coast and my Flip Flops Donuts and Bagel Shop in Emerald Isle or throwing parties and barbecues. Here in the South, Memorial Day weekend—that long weekend comprising the Saturday and Sunday before Memorial Day and Memorial Day itself—really is all about heralding the beginning of summer. And maybe just maybe if we can figure out how to stay out of future armed conflict, Memorial Day can morph into Get Ready For Summer Day and no disrespect for our fallen soldiers, but that might not be a bad idea.
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