Subhechcha Ganguly 
Memorial Day celebrates dead Civil War soldiers. According to a disputed version, Charleston’s African Americans organised a commemoration in 1865.Memorial Day, a day on which people around the country honour service members who have served in all wars, has its roots in the Civil War, which was the bloodiest fight in American history. About 6,20,000 soldiers died during this conflict, and efforts to remember them started soon after their passing. The holiday’s beginnings, however, are heavily contested and contested. Throughout history, a number of towns have proclaimed themselves to be the origins of Memorial Day.
Another story, which is frequently ignored, claims that African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, started the custom a year earlier, in 1864. In his book, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,” Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Blight describes a remembrance that was held in Charleston on May 1, 1865, which was coordinated by freed blacks and white missionaries. This event was place at a former racecourse where Union soldiers were imprisoned by the Confederacy during the final year of the war. There, at least 257 captives were buried in unmarked graves after passing away—many from sickness.
A memorial that included parades, songs, sermons, and lectures from Union officers, missionaries, and black preachers drew an estimated 10,000 attendees, mostly black locals. The gravesites were converted into “seas of flowers,” and the New York Tribune described the memorial procession as “a procession of friends and mourners like South Carolina and the United States had never seen before.”
