I think that over time, Memorial Day has turned into a celebration just due to the fact that it currently is forced to fall on a Monday, thus creating a three-day weekend. No work for many people, yeah! Unfortunately, the original intent and meaning is lost on many. I'm going to take a one day break from the usual silliness of this website, to talk briefly about this important day.
Memorial day originally started, according to some accounts, when recently freed slaves in the Charleston area entered a southern prison camp, and re-interred the many Union soldiers that had been buried there in a mass grave. They buried these soldiers in individual, marked graves and built a fence around the cemetery, honoring the soldiers that had bought their freedom with their lives. It was 1865 and these slaves had just been freed the month before! Can you imagine the personal risk they took to honor these soldiers?
Three years later,on May 30th, 1868, these former slaves returned, and decorated the graves with flowers and laurels. The date became known as "Decoration Day", the original name for Memorial Day. To this day, the National Cemeteries have their graves decorated for this occasion. In St. Louis, the boy scouts play a major role in this task.
The US government created this network of national cemeteries, originally to bury the many American Civil War dead. Nearly 3% of the population died either fighting or as collateral damage during this horrific war. That was over a million people. Near my house is one of these National Cemeteries, Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. Jefferson Barracks itself was named after Thomas Jefferson, who had died the year before it was formed. Jefferson Barracks started in 1826 as the country's first "infantry school of practice." The first soldier buried there was in 1827. In 1866, the cemetery became part of the US network of National Cemeteries and contains many civil war dead.
Memorial day has since been expanded to be a day honoring those who have died in any military service for our country, including the original confederate soldiers. I encourage everyone in the United States reading this, to make this history part of whatever celebration you are participating in today. If possible, make a brief stop at any of the National Cemeteries, either today, or over the next week. I will be doing the same.
Photo info: I made this print in 1991 - many years before all this digital stuff made such things easy...and cheap. The picture is actually two individual pictures, shot on 35mm film with a Minolta SRT-201 camera. One picture is of the cemetery at Jefferson Barracks, and the other is of a large rock that was behind my apartment. Master Slide, in Webster Groves, took each 35mm negative and created a 4x5 inter-negative from each photo. They then sandwiched both of these negatives together to create the final print. I'm sure all together it cost me a fortune! It is also matted and framed and hanging in my living room. I apologize for the "softness" of the scan. I was afraid to remove the photo from the mat, so it was not directly on the surface of the scanner, and thus a bit out of focus. The original is sharp and a bit brighter!
That picture is amazing!
Posted by: abunslife | May 26, 2008 at 10:16 PM