The First Memorial Day Was Black

And they've been trying to whitewash it ever since.

Tomorrow is election day in the Texas Democratic (and Republican) primary runoff elections. So, if you didn’t early vote, please make sure to vote tomorrow. There are two Democratic statewide races and multiple down-ballot races, so everyone has something on their ticket.

While Democrats had a higher turnout during the primary than Republicans, expect that to flip for the runoffs. The right absolutely has the enthusiasm factor going with the Cornyn vs. Paxton race. Unfortunately, I’m expecting Paxton to win. MAGA’s brains are rotted to the core. They somehow see $4-a-gallon gas and a government run by the Epstein class as a win. It’s up to the rest of society, whose brains haven’t rotted out, to save ourselves from them. Which is why Talarico will win in November, and along with that will be dozens of down-ballot flips.

Expect to hear from me late tomorrow, after the polls close, and we get the results back. Then, we won’t have to worry about elections again until… municipal runoffs.

But today isn’t about elections.

Today is Memorial Day.

Before we talk about what Memorial Day means in 2026, let’s talk about where it actually came from, because most Americans have never heard the real story.

Michael Motley posted a video in 2024 covering an extraordinary piece of buried American history, and it’s exactly the kind of thing we need to be talking about right now. Well worth the watch.

In the spring of 1865, the Civil War had just ended, and Charleston, SC, lay in ruins. During the war, Confederate forces had converted the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into an open-air prison camp for captured Union soldiers. More than 257 Union prisoners died there and were buried in mass graves by retreating Confederate forces.

When Charleston fell, and the Confederates evacuated, it was the city’s newly freed Black residents who stayed. And one of the first things they did with their freedom was honor the dead. Black ministers and northern missionaries led an effort to reinter the bodies and build a fence around a newly established cemetery. Over the entrance, workmen inscribed the words “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

Then, on May 1, 1865, thousands of Freedmen gathered at the cemetery to honor those soldiers. Freedmen schoolchildren led the procession with flowers. Black ministers presided over the parade while three thousand Black children sang “John Brown’s Body.” Nearly 10,000 people were present. It was the first Memorial Day.

That history was buried, like so much of American history. On purpose, and with malice, by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Why does this matter today?

Because the story of Memorial Day’s true origins is the story of America’s original sin, the story of the Lost Cause, and so many other pieces of American history. Black Americans did the profound, dignified, patriotic work of holding this country together, only to be written out of the history they created.

That erasure project has a new address. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order mandating the removal of all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government. On March 27, 2025, he followed it with Executive Order 14253, titled, with characteristic cynicism, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

The order targeted the Smithsonian Institution directly, ordering the removal of what it called “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from its museums, which, in practice, meant exhibits about racism, slavery, and the ongoing struggle for civil rights. The order singled out Independence National Historical Park for staff trainings on institutional racism, and the Department of the Interior had already removed Independence Hall’s slavery exhibit, including a memorial to people enslaved by George Washington at the site of his Philadelphia residence.

Then they came for the war dead. Arlington National Cemetery purged its website of historical pages about Black, Hispanic, and female veterans.

The Pentagon went even further. Following the removal of an article honoring Jackie Robinson’s military service, a Black Medal of Honor recipient, and numerous other pages highlighting contributions by women and minority groups, a Pentagon spokesperson blamed artificial intelligence for “accidental” takedowns. But it wasn’t an accident that the letters “DEI” were automatically added to the URLs of the pages that went dark. The Air Force briefly removed videos of the Tuskegee Airmen from basic military training to review them for DEI compliance. In the Netherlands, two panels commemorating Black soldiers at the American military cemetery in Margraten were removed.

And then, in June 2025, the National Park Service placed signs at parks asking visitors to use QR codes to report any “negative history” they encounter. They are literally asking the public to snitch on history.

This is the Lost Cause, repackaged for the 21st century. It is the same project that buried the story of the first Memorial Day for over a century. And it is being done, deliberately, to shape what future Americans believe about who this country belongs to.

The Trump Administration is a white supremacist administration.

Every act of white supremacy they partake in is overt and blatant. The overturning of the Voting Rights Act is only the latest example.

The freedmen who organized the first Memorial Day in 1865 were exercising their newly won citizenship. Within a decade, Reconstruction was crushed, and citizenship was stripped away for nearly a century. We are watching the architecture of that suppression get rebuilt, and I hope enough of us are paying attention.

And here’s what all Americans need to understand. Even if you aren’t Black, you are not a spectator. You’re already on the list, especially if you’re a woman. If you belong to the LGBTQ+ community. If you live in poverty. If you’re a single parent. If you aren’t a Christian. If you speak out against the current administration.

White supremacy as a governing philosophy doesn’t just harm Black Americans. It requires the degradation of everyone else to function. The same movement that is banning books about the Martyrs of the Race Course is the movement that is slashing Medicaid, gutting Social Security, handing your tax dollars to billionaires, and selling your kids’ futures to private equity. The same rotted-brain MAGA apparatus that thinks Paxton winning is a victory for them is the one that has made their groceries more expensive, their healthcare less accessible, and their children’s schools more underfunded.

Memorial Day shouldn’t just be about barbecues and car dealership sales.

It should be about remembering who actually built, defended, and loved this country, including the people who were never given full credit for doing so. The people who, the moment they were free, spent ten days digging up a mass grave with their bare hands to give strangers a dignified burial. The people who marched 10,000 strong, with flowers, and sang. The people whose story was buried for over a century because the truth of it was too powerful for white supremacy to survive.

They remembered. It’s our turn.

Go watch Michael Motley’s video. And tomorrow, go vote.

• May 26, 2026: Last day to receive ballot by mail (Democratic primary runoff elections)

• May 26, 2026: Election day! (Democratic primary runoff elections)

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