The holiday originated with tributes for soldiers who died in the Civil War.
Memorial Day, observed the last Monday in May each year, is a holiday that pays tribute to American military members who have died in service to the U.S.
The first observance of Decoration Day honored soldiers who died in the Civil War, the deadliest war in American history. Thesays General John Logan, leader of an organization for Northern Civil War veterans, called for a nationwide day of remembrance. He chose May 30 because it wasn’t the anniversary of any Civil War battle.
“Although it is unclear where exactly this tradition originated,” the U.S. Army Airborne and Special Operations Museum says “some records indicate that one of the earliest Memorial Day commemorations was organized by a group of formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865.”says the town of Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, claims to have observed Memorial Day tributes even earlier based on an observance dating back to October 1864.
The Constitution Center says the holiday was expanded to honor all American war fatalities after World War I. That became official, the Library of Congress says, in 1971, when achanged the observance of the holiday to the last Monday in May and extended the honor to all soldiers who died in American wars.
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