(AURN News) — As the nation pauses this Memorial Day to honor the fallen, it is important to remember a piece of history at the foundation of the holiday — a story that begins not in Washington, but in Charleston, South Carolina, in the spring of 1865.
Just weeks after the Civil War ended, thousands of newly freed Black residents of Charleston gathered at a former Confederate racetrack where Union prisoners had been held and buried in unmarked mass graves.
They reorganized the graves in proper rows, erected a fence and built an archway reading, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
Historians, including Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight, have called the ceremony one of the earliest and most significant Memorial Day observances on record.
From the 54th Massachusetts Infantry to the United States Colored Troops, Black soldiers did not just fight in wars. As one Civil War reenactor put it, “We built this nation, and we saved this nation.”
Click play to listen to the report from AURN White House Correspondent Ebony McMorris. For more news, follow @E_N_McMorris & @aurnonline.
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