Confederate Memorial Day

Confederate Memorial Day (called Confederate Heroes Day in Texas and Florida, and Confederate Decoration Day in Tennessee) is a holiday observed in several Southern U.S. states on various dates since the end of the American Civil War. The holiday was originally publicly presented as a day to remember the estimated 258,000 Confederate soldiers who died during the American Civil War. The Southern Poverty Law Center has condemned the holiday as part of a campaign of "racial terror" on the part of white supremacists - "an organized propaganda campaign, created to instill fear and ensure the ongoing oppression of formerly enslaved people." Writers and historians have pointed out that the holiday's official recognition by states often coincided with the height of Jim Crow racism around the United States, decades after the war ended. Renewed interest also revived the holiday in some places during the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. The holiday originated at a local level by Ladies' Memorial Associations to care for the graves of Confederate dead. It is currently an official state holiday in Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina; while it is commemorated in Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee. It was also formerly recognized in Missouri, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia. Several states celebrate it on or near April 26, when the last major Confederate field army surrendered at Bennett Place, North Carolina in 1865. In 1866, General John A. Logan commanded the posts of Grand Army of the Republic to strew flowers on the graves of Union soldiers, which observance later became the national Memorial Day. In a speech to veterans in Salem, Illinois, on July 4, 1866, Logan referred to the various dates of observance adopted in the South for the practice, saying "…traitors in the South have their gatherings day after day, to strew garlands of flowers upon the graves of Rebel soldiers..."