When is decoration day 2017

Memorial Day began in by African Americans to honor Union soldiers that had been buried in a Confederate prison camp turned mass gravesite. African Americans of Charleston, South Carolina worked diligently to move the bodies to proper, honorable gravesites. Decoration Day continued as a tradition to celebrate those who have died serving the country and in was an official holiday known as Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the last Monday of May commemorating men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Initially officially since - proclaimed by General John Logan Memorial Day was a holiday in memory of the soldiers who died in the Civil War. The feast was supposed to be a step towards national reconciliation.

Old Flag Circle. Temp Admin Bldg Parking Lot. Main Monument. Historic Lodge. Memorial Garden. Gerald B. Soldiers Monument. Main Flag Pole and Parade Grounds. PA Vets' Memorial Amphitheater. Cemetery Entrance. Flag Plaza. Highlanders Monument. Illinois Monument Area. Adjacent to Lodge. President Grover Cleveland made headlines in after he was accused of spending Memorial Day fishing. William B. Leach of St. None of that naysaying seemed to have much effect on how people spent their Memorial Days.

And, ironically, it turned out that the movement of Memorial Day away from its Civil War origins would help the holiday endure for decades to come. The GAR would reach its peak membership near the end of the 19th century, as a younger generation who hardly remembered the Civil War was coming into its own — and yet Memorial Day lived on.

Even after the very last Civil War veteran died in the s, newspapers and the public continued to express the idea that there are certain things one ought to do on Memorial Day, including the by-then-traditional morning visit to a cemetery — by then extended to honor those killed in all American wars — and the afternoon festivities.

The secular and sacred aspects of the day combined pleasure and recreation with mourning and ceremonies to express sorrow and unity. It was in the decades that followed, at least for those without a personal connection to the military, that the memorial aspects faded even more, as did many of the objections to that shift. After Vietnam, argued religious historian Catherine Albanese in , the collective nature of Memorial Day that Warner had described not so long before had eroded.

The country had become fragmented about what it meant for an American soldier to die, and the purpose of war in general. Visiting the graves of those who died during wartime, though it remains a part of the day for some and is still observed at cemeteries like Arlington, became a less public part of the day.