The Memorial Day history forgot: The martyrs of the race course
It has become a Daily Kos tradition for me to republish this Memorial Day story I wrote in 2016. Some of the links and text has been updated. I have ancestors, Black and white, who fought for the Union during the Civil War. This is posted in their honor. —DOV
A pencil drawing and a grainy photo in the Library of Congress are all that is left of the cemetery where 257 Union soldiers were buried after the Civil War, on what had been a horse race course in Charleston, South Carolina. Nor has much been written about the memorial celebration held by more than 10,000 mostly newly freed blacks, which was one of the first, if not the first memorial held for those who fought to end slavery.