African American Contributions to Memorial Day (U.S. National Park Service)

African American Memorial Day Observations From Reconstruction to World War I

In the decades following the Civil War, the role of African Americans in the celebration of Memorial Day remained a large one, especially in the South. Throughout the Reconstruction era, African Americans made up the vast majority of the day’s observers in the South, as the decoration of Confederate graves was still policed by the occupying federal forces.[5] After Reconstruction’s end . . .