Memorial Day, the long-awaited beginning of the summer season, is almost upon us. This annual commemoration of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of our country is held each year on the last Monday in May. But how did this holiday come to be? And what does it actually observe? For that information, we turn to history and look back to the days following the end of the Civil War.
In the spring of 1865, in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, a crowd of 10,000 people—mostly recently freed enslaved people and members of the 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union troops—staged a parade around a newly created burial ground for former prisoners of war. This was the first recorded and little known Memorial Day commemoration.
Decoration Day, which was how Memorial Day used to be known, was first officially celebrated in Waterloo, New York on May 5, 1866. It was a community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags. On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan, leader of an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, called for a nationwide day of remembrance later that month. “The 30th of May 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land,” he proclaimed. The date of Decoration Day was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.
Memorial Day, as Decoration Day gradually came to be known, originally honored only those lost while fighting in the Civil War. But during World War I the United States found itself embroiled in another major conflict, and the holiday evolved to commemorate American military personnel who died in all wars, including World War II, The Vietnam War, The Korean War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For decades, Memorial Day continued to be observed on May 30, the date General Logan had selected for the first Decoration Day. But in 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May in order to create a three-day weekend for federal employees. The change went into effect in 1971. The same law also declared Memorial Day a federal holiday.
Cities and towns across the United States host Memorial Day parades each year, often incorporating military personnel and members of veterans’ organizations. Americans also observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries and memorials. Some people wear a red poppy in remembrance of those fallen in war—a tradition that began with the World War I poem, “In Flanders Field”, by John McRae. On a less somber note, many people take weekend trips or throw parties and barbecues on the holiday, perhaps because Memorial Day weekend—the long weekend comprising the Saturday and Sunday before Memorial Day and Memorial Day itself—unofficially marks the beginning of summer.