Memorial Day

["American Flag at Sunset," by Petr Kratochvil, taken from PublicDomainPictures.Net; this image is in the public domain.]

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. This post is just to remind you about what Memorial Day really signifies. Yes, it's a day on which we remember all of our veterans and fallen heroes, but what it signifies is much more than that. Memorial day was instituted at the end of the civil war in remembrance of the liberation of Union soldiers from Confederate concentration camps. Freed slaves and black infantry units freed Union POWs from Confederate concentration camps and took some time on that May day to honor and bury the Union soldiers who died while being imprisoned by the Confederate forces. Memorial day is modeled after that poignant historic event.

The significance of memorial day is the sacrifice that America made to rectify its inability and unwillingness to deal with slavery and extend the inalienable rights of individual freedom to all Americans until the differences between the north and south (including but not limited to the issue of slavery) boiled over into physical conflict. Memorial day commemorates the sacrifice Americans made to continue to be able to call itself a nation of free men. Yes, some white Americans participated in slavery - but never forget that all white Americans paid the price for it.