MAY 30, 1868: MEMORIAL DAY & BLACK LIVES MATTER
Even before the murder of George Floyd, on May 25, 2020, the Monday of Memorial Day weekend, the holiday was historically linked to Black lives.
“Flags in,” Arlington National Cemetery (National Park Service)
Memorial Day is rooted in the Civil War, fought over the South’s insistence on its states’ rights to enslave Black people. America’s deadliest conflict killed an estimated 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers, hundreds of bystanders and thousands of horses. It destroyed families, property and livelihoods, mostly in the South. It left behind a nation of widows, many of whom played roles in memorial commemorations. For fifty years, based on the politics of race, the event was regionally divisive.
Many people have been credited with proposing Memorial Day. Mary Ann Williams, the widow of a Confederate officer, volunteered with the Soldiers Aid Society in Columbus, Georgia. Merging with other local groups across the South, it became the Ladies’ Memorial Association. As its secretary, Williams sent an open appeal to regional newspapers in March 1866. Signed “A Southern Woman,” it recounted that women cleaning and decorating the graves of “our gallant Confederate dead” needed help; it was “unfinished work unless a day be set apart annually for its especial attention.” Given the availability of flowers in most seasons, long before the war, “flowering graves” was a Southern tradition.
In Columbus, Mississippi, ladies decorated both Confederate and Union graves, inspiring a poem by abolitionist Francis Finch. “The Blue and the Gray,” published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1867, urged forgiveness and reconciliation. Instead, the commemorations enshrined ante-bellum culture. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, an 1894 outgrowth of the Ladies’ Memorial Association, instilled myths of the cavalier South, the happy slave and the “Lost Cause.” From the 1890s to the 1960s, the UDC erected hundreds of Confederate memorials.
In 1874, the Georgia legislature established the first Confederate Memorial Day. Other states followed but there was no uniform date. Some chose April 26, the day Confederate General Joseph Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1865; or May 10, the day Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson died in 1863; or June 3, the birthday of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.
In Waterloo, NY, in 1865, pharmacist Henry Welles suggested that the town honor both living and dead veterans. His proposal was ignored until a local hero, Union General John Murray, enthusiastically endorsed it, hosting an event on May 5, 1866. A century later, in a decade of racial tensions and advances, the US Congress recognized Waterloo as “the birthplace of Memorial Day.”
Yale historian David Blight argues that formerly enslaved Black workmen held the first memorial observation. Protected by Union infantry, including three regiments of US Colored Troops, they reinterred and decorated the graves of 200 Union prisoners of war in Charleston, SC, on May 1, 1865. Soon after, white leaders in Augusta, Georgia, barred African Americans from decorating Union graves. That prohibition spread.
In 1868, Union General John A. Logan, then commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a politically powerful fraternal organization of Union veterans, called for a national celebration on May 30, a date with no historic associations. Speaking to the GAR, Logan reported that “traitors in the South . . . day after day . . . [mark] the graves of rebel soldiers.” He called for a public holiday, “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.”
General John Logan (Library of Congress)
On May 30, 1868, the first national Decoration Day, 183 communities held events in twenty-seven states, among thirty-seven. General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant presided at Arlington National Cemetery. Another Union general and future president, Ohio Republican Congressman James Garfield, spoke, asking the 5000 guests to decorate its 20,000 graves with flowers. Today, in homage to that first Decoration Day, the public is invited to place flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Since President Truman ordered a “Flags In” operation in 1948, flags have replaced flowers. The Thursday before the holiday weekend, the 3d US Army Infantry Regiment puts a letter-sized flag one boot-length in front of more that 260,000 headstones and at the bottom of the columbarium of 7,000 niches at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and at the US Soldiers’
(NPS)
The 3d US Infantry Regiment, traditionally known as The Old Guard, is the Army’s oldest active infantry unit, having served since 1784, from campaigns against Native Americans on the Ohio frontier to the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. In 1948, it was assigned to guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and to provide funeral support at Arlington and ceremonial support in the Washington District.
The immediate issue for Civil War burials was identifying bodies. As Drew Gilpin Faust describes in This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, there was no system -- no dog tags, no official burial records. An 1862 act of Congress established the first military cemeteries. Among the first was Arlington, established in 1864, on a plantation Robert E. Lee’s wife had inherited from Martha Washington’s heirs.
Arlington House, Robert E. Lee’s home (National Park Service)
The scale of carnage was unimaginable. Until the US National Cemetery System was created in 1865, to construct cemeteries for Union dead, body disposal was a local problem. In 1863, it took four malodorous months to bury 7,000 corpses at Gettysburg, not counting horses. President Lincoln would dedicate, and consecrate, those shallow graves: “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.” Their sacrifice would lead to “a new birth of freedom.”
Frederick Douglass insisted that the nation remember Lincoln’s words and the war’s purpose. Speaking at Arlington on May 30, 1871, in front of President Grant and his cabinet, the Black orator hoped that Union dead would be honored not only for valor but for the cause they defended. “They died for their country,” he repeated twice, fighting for “the hope of freedom” and against “the hell-black system of human bondage.”
Instead, the country abandoned Reconstruction, the Klan terrorized Black citizens, Jim Crow laws enforced segregation and the Supreme Court institutionalized white supremacy. Animosity between Union and Confederate veterans over the causes and consequences of the war remained intense. West Point refused to acknowledge alumni deemed traitors.
In 1898, the ten-week Spanish-American War united former combatants in the first engagement by US troops in an international conflict since before the Civil War. To secure support for ratification of the treaty to end the war, President McKinley traveled 2,000 miles across the Deep South, because Southerners controlled the Senate. In Atlanta, the Union veteran announced that the federal government would fund Confederate cemeteries, since “these heroic dead” represented “American valor.” Perhaps McKinley anticipated the nation’s future need for a unified military.
Two years later Congress approved the burial of Confederate dead in a separate section of Arlington. Southern women opposed the proposal, not wanting secessionist graves on federal property. Next, they lobbied for a Confederate memorial inside the national cemetery. Authorized by Congress in 1906, the monument was unveiled by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, on Jefferson Davis’ birthday. While honoring white Civil War dead was intended to reconnect the nation, the former Confederacy refused to commemorate their dead on May 30
The history of Memorial Day chronicles regional rather than racial reconciliation. In July 1913, on the fiftieth anniversary of Gettysburg, 50,000 frail and failing white veterans held a four-day Blue and Gray Reunion at the Pennsylvania battlefield. Sectional animosities lingered. Confederates carried battle flags and wore uniform gray jackets with military hats, while the winners wore civilian attire.
July 1913 Gettysburg Reunion (Library of Congress)
Speakers described a gathering unified by respect for the bravery of the dead -- whether they were traitors, enslavers, conscripts or heroes. President Wilson addressed “what it costs to make a nation – the blood and sacrifice of multitudes,” but was, according to news reports, “not once . . . interrupted by a handclap or a cheer.” There were no African American participants. At a Half Century Exposition and Lincoln Jubilee in Chicago, delayed until 1915, Black citizens marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
On Decoration Day 1917, race riots in St. Louis prompted white Republican Congressman Leonidas Dyer to draft the country’s first anti-lynching law. On May 30, 1921, a white mob ransacked, burned and bombed the prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. News of the massacre was censored and later erased. On Memorial Day 1922, at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, Black guests were seated in a segregated section behind Confederate veterans.
In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, creating three-day weekends for major holidays. In 1971, it renamed Decoration Day and set Memorial Day on the third Monday in May. Only Independence Day (July 4) and Veterans Day, “the eleventh day of the eleventh month” (November 11), the date of the armistice at the end of World War I, remain sacrosanct.
Today, on Memorial Day observed, presidents lay wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider and veteran Rolling Thunder motorcyclists roar through DC. Small towns stage civic ceremonies and families decorate graves. Fewer than one in ten Americans participate in a Memorial Day observation. In 1913, veterans were already alarmed by young people engaging in “games, races and revelry” rather than “a day of memories and tears.” Now the holiday marks the start of summer. To emphasize its meaning, the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars have lobbied to restore the May 30 date. Advertising campaigns remind Americans of the day’s patriotic roots.
(Instagram post)
In 2000, the National Moment of Remembrance Act called for a moment of silence at 3:00 pm on Memorial Day. Few Americans know about it. In 2015, retired Air Force bugler Jari Villanueva launched Taps Across America, asking volunteers to play “Taps” following the moment of silence. More than 10,000 musicians joined the national salute.
(https://www.tapsacrossamerica.org/)
For decades, Decoration Day remained a mostly white event -- until the 2020 murder of a Black man by four white Minneapolis police officers. Handcuffed, face-down, George Floyd was suffocated for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds by Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck. Captured on video, Floyd’s death shot across the internet. Chauvin, convicted of murder in a state criminal trial and of violating his victim’s civil rights in federal court, is serving a
Watching George Floyd die horrified, outraged and energized the country. On Saturday, June 6, 2020, in 550 communities, 500,000 people demonstrated. That summer, between fifteen and twenty-six million people marched in every state, in 5,700 initiatives to support Black civil rights, including prominent Republicans. For the first time, according to the General Social Survey conducted by the University of Chicago, a majority, 55% of Americans, agreed that discrimination was the main reason Black people had worse jobs, poorer housing and less income than whites.
Volunteer artists joined the DC Department of Public Works to paint BLACK LIVES MATTER in bright yellow, 35-foot tall, bold font letters, transforming two-blocks of Sixteenth Street, just north of Lafayette Park and the White House, into a pedestrian plaza.
(Public domain)
Floyd’s death reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement. It had begun in July 2013, following the acquittal of teenager Trayvon Martin’s killer. Three Black women formed a national coalition, the Movement for Black Lives, with a hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter. Patrisse Khan-Cullors was a Fulbright Scholar and chair of Reform LA Jails. Alicia Garcia was an organizer for the National Domestic Workers Alliance and advocate for gender non-conforming women. Opal Tometi was a Nigerian-American writer who led the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. They had met through a leadership training program for community organizers.
Alicia Garcia, Patrice Cullors & Opal Tometi (Ben Baker/Redux Pictures)
#BLM gained national attention in 2014 following the deaths of Eric Garner on Staten Island, NY, and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Both died at the hands of white police officers using excessive force. Violence against Black Americans had long been a daily reality but now it was on the internet and undeniable. In June 2015, a twenty-one-year-old Confederate sympathizer killed nine Black parishioners attending Bible study at the historic “Mother Emanuel” AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The accused was found guilty, sentenced to the first death penalty in a federal hate crimes case and is awaiting execution.
In that period of grief and unrest, the country debated the role of guns and Confederate flags. BLM was accused of reverse racism as opponents shouted: “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter.” In 2014, 43% of survey respondents believed there was inequitable racial treatment by police. By the summer of 2020, that number increased to 74%. Multiracial marchers, carrying BLM signs, demanded racial justice, chanting Floyd’s last words, “I Can’t Breathe!”
Mural by Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrera & Greta McLain at 38th and Chicago Ave. South
has become a memorial site for the Minneapolis community. (Public Domain)
Protesters called for an end to choke holds and no-knock warrants. They insisted on police reform, body cameras, de-escalation training and oversight by the Department of Justice. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro declared, “Everyone should be on the same side. It’s police brutality.”
Five years later, Mr. Shapiro, joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Tucker Carlson, has asked President Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, asserting that he was “lynched.” The DOJ has ended its oversight of police departments in Minneapolis, Louisville, Memphis and Phoenix. Efforts to curtail qualified immunity, which make it difficult to prosecute police, failed. The federal data base tracking police misconduct has been deleted, DEI initiatives have been discarded and BLM Plaza has been erased by jackhammers. Fatal shootings by police peaked in 2024.
Again in our history, white grievance has trumped Black lives. Like the “Lost Cause,” in the face of factual evidence, lies are repeated and amplified.
In 2020, some angry citizens wanted to abolish or defund the police, expressions used against Democratic candidates by Republicans, who claimed wholehearted support for and from law enforcement. Five years later, on inauguration day 2025, President Trump pardoned the 1,600 insurrectionists who had been convicted of attacking the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. They attempted to stop certification of Electoral College ballots and the legitimate transfer of presidential power. The Capitol mob, many carrying Confederate flags, assaulted more than 140 US Capitol police, severely injuring several.
In 2022, the Congress approved a plaque honoring law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol, but its installation has been delayed. The cast bronze memorial sits in a basement storage room because House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has not instructed the Architect of the Capitol to act. News accounts assert that Republican members are embarrassed but afraid to press the issue. Neither the Speaker nor the White House has commented.
George Floyd’s murder and BLM protests in 2020 prompted a national reconsideration of our history and culture. For example, inappropriate iconography was removed as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s products. Streets, schools, sports teams, country bands and bird species were renamed. The Scrabble Dictionary deleted 250 words. Whites learned about Juneteenth. Statues were removed, including Arlington’s Confederate monument. That action and changing the names of ten army bases, named for Confederates, were recommended by the Pentagon’s 2022 Naming Commission, a decision Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has attempted to reverse. America was waking up, a movement President Trump condemns as “woke.”
On June 14, the country will mark the 250th anniversary of the US Army. We will honor the the men and women (and non-binary people) who have served and sacrificed to protect our nation and its values. Each of them has sworn to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” It’s important to recall Frederick Douglass’ emphasis on why we honor our military: because (except for traitors) they fight for the freedom for all Americans.
Happy May 30 Memorial Day.
Full disclosure: My son was among the artists who painted the BLACK LIVES MATTER street mural in WDC.
SOURCES:
Richard Gardiner and Daniel Bellware, The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday (Columbus
[GA] State University, 2014).
Gillian Brockwell, “Does Memorial Day Have Origins in the Decoration of Confederate Graves?”
Washington Post (May 25, 2024), https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2024/05/25/memorial-day-start-origins-confederates/
“The History and Origin of Memorial Day in Waterloo, NY,” https://waterloony.com/memorial-day/history/
History.com Editors, “Memorial Day” (October 27, 2009) https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/memorial-day-history
David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (Simon & Schuster, 2018).
Drew Gilpin Faust, “They Died for the Promise of America,” New York Times (May 26, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/26/opinion/memorial-day-democracy-crisis.html
Eric Kayne, “’Every Headstone Tells a Story:’ Army’s Old Guard Places 260,000 Flags at Arlington Cemetery in Advance of Memorial Day,” Stars and Stripes (May 22, 2025), https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2025-05-22/army-old-guard-flags-arlington-memorial-day-17877805.html
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Vintage
Random House, 2008).
John L. Hopkins, The World Will Never See Its Like: The Gettysburg Reunion of 1913 (Savas
Beatie, 2023).
Thomas R. Flagel, War, Memory and the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion (Kent State University Press,
2019).
Shayla Dewan, “Five Years Later, Right Reframes Killing of Floyd,” New York Times (May 25, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/us/george-floyd-derek-chauvin-republicans.html
Akilah Johnson and Scott Clement, “Five Years After Floyd’s Murder, Racial Reckoning Has Stalled,” Washington Post (May 25, 2025), https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/24/george-floyd-murder-dei-police-reform/
Joe Heim, “Plaque Honoring Jan. 6 Officers Still Not Installed,” Washington Post (May 23, 2025), https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/23/capitol-police-plaque-january-6-trump/
Elisabeth Griffith, FORMIDABLE: American Women and the Fight for Equality, 1920-2020 (Pegasus, 2022).