.

This man told me quite a bit about Charleston, including the fact that it was the site of the first Memorial Day. Back in Philly, I found this quotation from Yale Professor, David W. Blight:

"This was the first Memorial Day. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the War had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.”



.