Holiday originally known as ‘Decoration Day’
BY JEAN JACQUES BOHL
First known as Decoration Day, the holiday celebrated today as Memorial Day has its origins in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War and has evolved over the past 150 years to become a day to remember U.S. service men and women, particularly those who gave their lives in the service of their country.
The first recorded observance of a Memorial Day-type celebration occurred in Charleston, S.C., on May 1, 1865, when newly freed black residents of Charleston landscaped and built an enclosure around a mass grave of Union soldiers who had died in captivity in a nearby Confederate prison camp.
The following year, on April 25, in Columbus, Miss., local women decorated the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers.
The next known commemoration of war dead occurred on May 5, 1868 when Civil War Union General John A. Logan, then commander of The Grand Army of the Republic, a Northern veterans association, issued a proclamation for a nationwide and annual observance of Decoration Day as a day to remember fallen Union soldiers.
With a growing recognition of Decoration Day, it became an observance in various areas where people would put flowers on the graves of Union soldiers. The day of May 30 was chosen for the observance.
By 1890, every Union state had made Decoration Day a state holiday. Southern states also held observances for their dead soldiers.
A four-day “Blue and Gray” event in 1913 in Gettysburg, Pa., involving both former Union and Confederate veterans, marked the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg July 1-3 in 1863 and became recognized as a national reconciliation of the Civil War.
The name Memorial Day instead of Decoration Day became more in use following World War I and especially so after World War II.
While Veterans Day salutes the service of all veterans, living and dead, who have served in the U.S. armed forces, Memorial Day was originally intended to remember soldiers who paid the ultimate price while serving. More than 1.1 million U.S. servicemen and women have died in battle since 1776.
It took a 1967 federal law to make the name Memorial Day official. In 1968 the U.S. Congress approved the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, moving four holidays, including Memorial Day, to a specified Monday in order to create three-day weekends. The law took effect in 1971. After some confusion and bickering, all 50 states adopted the federal holiday policy.
Since then, the Veterans of Foreign Wars has advocated for a return to the traditional observance of May 30. The VFW stated in a 2002 Memorial Day address that “changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt this has contributed a lot to the general public’s nonchalant observance of Memorial Day.”
Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, a World War II veteran, supported the VFW point of view and in 1987 introduced a measure in Congress to return Memorial Day to May 30. He continued to push for changing the observance until his death in 2002.