Memorial Day, Monday, May 31, to honor those who lost their lives while serving in the U.S. military
Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries or memorials, holding family gatherings, enjoying oudoor activities, picnics and parties, or participating in or observing parades. Memorial Day unofficially marks the beginning of summer, just as Labor Day unofficially marks the end of summer!
Memorial Day, first known as Decoration Day, became an official federal holiday in 1971. Decoration Day was first celebrated on May 30, 1868, organized by General John A. Logan, the leader of an organization for northern Civil War veterans as a nationwide day of remembrance. May 30 was selected because it was not the anniversary of any particular Civil War battle. General Logan said that the purpose of the day was to place flowers or other decorations on the graves of "comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.” On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, where 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Civil War soldiers buried there.
The first Memorial Day-type celebrations began shortly after the Civil War, which ended in the spring of 1865, and claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history. One of the earliest known Memorial Day-type commemorations was held in 1865, less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered, organized by a group of former slaves in Charleston, South Carolina. After the Civil War, the first national cemeteries were established, and by the late 1860s, Americans, all over the county had begun holding springtime tributes to the many fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers. In 1966, the federal government declared Waterloo, New York the birthplace of Memorial Day, because it had hosted an annual community event for a hundred years, first celebrated on May 5, 1866.
Similar commemorative events were held in many Northern states, and by 1890, all had made Decoration Day an official state holiday. Southern states honored their dead on separate days until after World War I. Decoration Day gradually came to be known as Memorial Day. It initially honored those who lost their lives fighting in the Civil War, but the holiday evolved over time to also commemorate the U.S. military personnel who died in all wars, including World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, the Korean conflict, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For many years, Memorial Day was observed on May 30, the date selected by General Logan for the first Decoration Day. However, in 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which declared Memorial Day a federal holiday to be celebrated on the last Monday in May, to create a three-day weekend for federal employees, and went into effect in 1971.