#freedslaves

On May 1, 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina, recently freed African-Americans held a parade of 10,000 people to honor 257 dead Union soldiers, whose remains they had reburied from a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. #memorialday #freedslaves #blackhistory #southcarolina https://www.instagram.com/p/CPj4RhbAykG/?utm_medium=tumblr

Happy Junteenth! Now a federal holiday. I just hope that there will be reparations in the upcoming months for what black people have gone through, starting with the survivors of Black Wall Street. #junteenth #freedom #freedslaves #emancipation https://www.instagram.com/p/CQTghzIA69-/?utm_medium=tumblr

Edited for posting: Memorial Day was born out of necessity. After the American Civil War, a battered United States was faced with the task of burying and honoring the 600,000 to 800,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who had died in the single bloodiest military conflict in American history. Several towns and cities across America claim to have observed their own earlier versions of Memorial Day or “Decoration Day” as early as 1866. (The earlier name is derived from the fact that decorating graves was and remains a central activity of Memorial Day.) But it wasn’t until a remarkable discovery in a dusty Harvard University archive the late 1990s that historians learned about a Memorial Day commemoration organized by a group of freed black slaves less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. . Back in 1996, David Blight, a professor of American History at Yale University, was researching a book on the Civil War when curator at Harvard’s Haughton Library asked if he wanted to look through two boxes of unsorted material from Union veterans. “There was a file labeled ‘First Decoration Day,’” remembers Blight, still amazed at his good fortune. “And inside on a piece of cardboard was a narrative handwritten by an old veteran, plus a date referencing an article in The New York Tribune. That narrative told the essence of the story that I ended up telling in my book, of this march on the race track in 1865.”’ . When Charleston fell and Confederate troops evacuated the badly damaged city, freed slaves remained. One of the first things those emancipated men and women did was to give the fallen Union prisoners a proper burial. They exhumed the mass grave and reinterred the bodies in a new cemetery with a tall whitewashed fence inscribed with the words: “Martyrs of the Race Course.” . #memorialday #freedslaves #slaves #blacklivesmatter#wefight #weresist #wewillwin #outfittingtherevolution #deconstructtheconstruct #blackonblackbk #itslifeordeathforus #blacketyblack #blackonblackbk #blackskin #blacknose #blacklips #blackhair #blackeverything #blackmagician #blaaaaacknificent #blackpower #blackpride #supportblackbusiness #supportblackart (at Bedford-Stuyvesant) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeLzuRZO47s/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Edited for posting: Memorial Day was born out of necessity. After the American Civil War, a battered United States was faced with the task of burying and honoring the 600,000 to 800,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who had died in the single bloodiest military conflict in American history. Several towns and cities across America claim to have observed their own earlier versions of Memorial Day or “Decoration Day” as early as 1866. (The earlier name is derived from the fact that decorating graves was and remains a central activity of Memorial Day.) But it wasn’t until a remarkable discovery in a dusty Harvard University archive the late 1990s that historians learned about a Memorial Day commemoration organized by a group of freed black slaves less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. . Back in 1996, David Blight, a professor of American History at Yale University, was researching a book on the Civil War when curator at Harvard’s Haughton Library asked if he wanted to look through two boxes of unsorted material from Union veterans. “There was a file labeled ‘First Decoration Day,’” remembers Blight, still amazed at his good fortune. “And inside on a piece of cardboard was a narrative handwritten by an old veteran, plus a date referencing an article in The New York Tribune. That narrative told the essence of the story that I ended up telling in my book, of this march on the race track in 1865.”’ . When Charleston fell and Confederate troops evacuated the badly damaged city, freed slaves remained. One of the first things those emancipated men and women did was to give the fallen Union prisoners a proper burial. They exhumed the mass grave and reinterred the bodies in a new cemetery with a tall whitewashed fence inscribed with the words: “Martyrs of the Race Course.” . #memorialday #freedslaves #slaves #blacklivesmatter#wefight #weresist #wewillwin #outfittingtherevolution #deconstructtheconstruct #blackonblackbk #itslifeordeathforus #blacketyblack #blackonblackbk #blackskin #blacknose #blacklips #blackhair #blackeverything #blackmagician #blaaaaacknificent #blackpower #blackpride #supportblackbusiness #supportblackart (at Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn) https://www.instagram.com/p/CAoWjD8Jkpb/?igshid=ls1gamhwp95q

Mon, 05.01.1865 The first American Memorial Day is Commemorated Black residents of Charleston, 1865 *On this date in 1865, former Black slaves started Memorial Day in America. This occurred in Charleston, SC., after the American Civil War. It was to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. Together with teachers and missionaries, Black residents of Charleston organized a May Day ceremony that year which was covered by the New York Tribune and other national papers. The freedmen cleaned up and landscaped the burial ground, building an enclosure and an arch labeled, "Martyrs of the Race Course." Nearly ten thousand people, mostly freedmen, gathered on May 1st to commemorate the war dead. Involved were about 3,000 Black school children newly enrolled in Freedmen's schools, mutual aid societies, Union troops, Black ministers, and White northern missionaries. Most brought flowers to be placed on the burial field. Years later, the celebration would come to be called the "First Decoration Day" in the North. David W. Blight of the New York Tribune described the day: "This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.” Today the site is used as Hampton Park #memorialday #memorialdayweekend #freedslaves https://www.instagram.com/p/CAnUWEZAYfl/?igshid=5vz3jhijcvtx

Edited for posting: Memorial Day was born out of necessity. After the American Civil War, a battered United States was faced with the task of burying and honoring the 600,000 to 800,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who had died in the single bloodiest military conflict in American history. Several towns and cities across America claim to have observed their own earlier versions of Memorial Day or “Decoration Day” as early as 1866. (The earlier name is derived from the fact that decorating graves was and remains a central activity of Memorial Day.) But it wasn’t until a remarkable discovery in a dusty Harvard University archive the late 1990s that historians learned about a Memorial Day commemoration organized by a group of freed black slaves less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. . Back in 1996, David Blight, a professor of American History at Yale University, was researching a book on the Civil War when curator at Harvard’s Haughton Library asked if he wanted to look through two boxes of unsorted material from Union veterans. “There was a file labeled ‘First Decoration Day,’” remembers Blight, still amazed at his good fortune. “And inside on a piece of cardboard was a narrative handwritten by an old veteran, plus a date referencing an article in The New York Tribune. That narrative told the essence of the story that I ended up telling in my book, of this march on the race track in 1865.”’ . When Charleston fell and Confederate troops evacuated the badly damaged city, freed slaves remained. One of the first things those emancipated men and women did was to give the fallen Union prisoners a proper burial. They exhumed the mass grave and reinterred the bodies in a new cemetery with a tall whitewashed fence inscribed with the words: “Martyrs of the Race Course.” . #memorialday #freedslaves #slaves #blacklivesmatter#wefight #weresist #wewillwin #outfittingtherevolution #deconstructtheconstruct #blackonblackbk #itslifeordeathforus #blacketyblack #blackonblackbk #blackskin #blacknose #blacklips #blackhair #blackeverything #blackmagician #blaaaaacknificent #blackpower #blackpride #supportblackbusiness #supportblackart (at Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx-6rJnlF6q/?igshid=1spy91iahgvpm

Now this was posted. In 2016. So if she is still living #118. #missedda. #slave. #freedslaves #misseddanoraleesmith https://www.instagram.com/p/Bus8jAeHrFy/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=dqiuymbc3945