{"id":31726,"date":"2024-05-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2024\/05\/27\/from-history-to-controversy-5-things-to-know-about-memorial-day\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T15:26:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T15:26:36","slug":"from-history-to-controversy-5-things-to-know-about-memorial-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/events\/2024\/05\/27\/from-history-to-controversy-5-things-to-know-about-memorial-day\/","title":{"rendered":"From history to controversy: 5 things to know about Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NORFOLK, Va. \u2014 Memorial Day is supposed to be about mourning the nation\u2019s fallen service members, but it\u2019s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of discounts on anything from mattresses to lawn mowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for people such as Manuel Casta\u00f1eda Jr., the day is very personal. He lost his father, a U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam, in an accident in 1966 in California while his father was training other Marines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t just the specials. It isn\u2019t just the barbecue,\u201d Casta\u00f1eda told The Associated Press in a discussion about Memorial Day last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Casta\u00f1eda also served in the Marines and Army National Guard, from which he knew men who died in combat. But he tries not to judge others who spend the holiday differently: \u201cHow can I expect them to understand the depth of what I feel when they haven\u2019t experienced anything like that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is Memorial Day celebrated?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a day of reflection and remembrance of those who died while serving in the U.S. military, according to the Congressional Research Service. The holiday is observed in part by the National Moment of Remembrance, which encourages all Americans to pause at 3 p.m. for a moment of silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are the origins of Memorial Day?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The holiday stems from the American Civil War, which killed more than 600,000 service members \u2014 both Union and Confederate \u2014 between 1861 and 1865.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s little controversy over the first national observance of what was then called Decoration Day. It occurred May 30, 1868, after an organization of Union veterans called for decorating war graves with flowers, which were in bloom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The practice was already widespread on a local level. Waterloo, New York, began a formal observance on May 5, 1866, and was later proclaimed to be the holiday\u2019s birthplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, traced its first observance to October 1864, according to the Library of Congress. And women in some Confederate states were decorating graves before the war\u2019s end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Blight, a Yale history professor, points to May 1, 1865, when as many as 10,000 people, many of them Black, held a parade, heard speeches and dedicated the graves of Union dead in Charleston, South Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A total of 267 Union troops had died at a Confederate prison and were buried in a mass grave. After the war, members of Black churches buried them in individual graves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat happened in Charleston does have the right to claim to be first, if that matters,\u201d Blight told The Associated Press in 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel cited the story in a Memorial Day speech in Hudson, Ohio. The ceremony\u2019s organizers turned off his microphone<\/a> because they said it wasn\u2019t relevant to honoring the city\u2019s veterans. The event\u2019s organizers later resigned<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Has Memorial Day always been a source of contention?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Someone has always lamented the holiday\u2019s drift from its original meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As early as 1869, The New York Times wrote that the holiday could become \u201csacrilegious\u201d and no longer \u201csacred\u201d if it focuses more on pomp, dinners and oratory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1871, abolitionist Frederick Douglass feared Americans were forgetting the Civil War\u2019s impetus \u2014 enslavement \u2014 when he gave a Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation\u2019s destroyers,\u201d Douglass said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His concerns were well-founded, said Ben Railton, a professor of English and American studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. Even though roughly 180,000 Black men served in the Union Army, the holiday in many communities would essentially become \u201cwhite Memorial Day,\u201d especially after the rise of the Jim Crow South, Railton told the AP in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, how the day was spent \u2014 at least by the nation\u2019s elected officials \u2014 could draw scrutiny for years after the Civil War. In the 1880s, then-President Grover Cleveland was said to have gone fishing \u2014 and \u201cpeople were appalled,\u201d Matthew Dennis, an emeritus history professor at the University of Oregon, told the AP last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1911, the Indianapolis 500 held its inaugural race on May 30, drawing 85,000 spectators. A report from The Associated Press<\/a> made no mention of the holiday \u2014 or any controversy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How has Memorial Day changed?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dennis said Memorial Day\u2019s potency diminished somewhat with the addition of Armistice Day, which marked World War I\u2019s end on Nov. 11, 1918. Armistice Day became a national holiday by 1938 and was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An act of Congress changed Memorial Day from every May 30th to the last Monday in May in 1971. Dennis said the creation of the three-day weekend recognized that Memorial Day had long been transformed into a more generic remembrance of the dead, as well as a day of leisure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1972, Time Magazine said the holiday had become \u201ca three-day nationwide hootenanny that seems to have lost much of its original purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is Memorial Day tied to sales and travel?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Even in the 19th century, grave ceremonies were followed by leisure activities such as picnicking and foot races, Dennis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The holiday also evolved alongside baseball and the automobile, the five-day work week and summer vacation, according to the 2002 book \u201cA History of Memorial Day: Unity, Discord and the Pursuit of Happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mid-20th century, a small number of businesses began to open defiantly on the holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the holiday moved to Monday, \u201cthe traditional barriers against doing business began to crumble,\u201d authors Richard Harmond and Thomas Curran wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, Memorial Day sales and traveling are deeply woven into the nation\u2019s muscle memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jason Redman, a retired Navy SEAL who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the AP last year that he honors the friends he\u2019s lost. Thirty names are tattooed on his arm \u201cfor every guy that I personally knew that died.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wants Americans to remember the fallen \u2014 but also to enjoy themselves, knowing lives were sacrificed to forge the holiday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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