05/25/2026
This Memorial Day, we honor the fallen. The ones who never came home. The names etched into stone, folded into flags, and carried quietly across generations.
And buried within the history of the day itself is something extraordinary.
In Charleston in 1865, just after the Civil War ended, Black Americans gathered at a former Confederate prison camp where Union soldiers had been left in a mass grave.
They recovered the bodies, reburied them properly, built a memorial arch, and covered the graves with flowers.
Thousands came to honor the fallen. Teachers. Laborers. Ministers. Children. Union soldiers...all citizens.
Some were only beginning to experience freedom themselves as emancipation spread unevenly across the South after the war. The soldiers they honored had died in a conflict tied directly to that freedom.
What became formally recognized nationwide years later as "Decoration Day" — and eventually "Memorial Day" — had already begun taking shape in moments like this.
There is something unforgettable about the unsung origin of the day. After everything that had been broken apart, people still choosing remembrance; still choosing dignity; still choosing love; still choosing humanity.
Memorial Day still carries the memory not only of those who sacrificed in war, but of the generations who gathered afterward to ensure those sacrifices would be remembered with dignity.
