Memorial Day

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The first known observance of Memorial Day was in Charleston, South Carolina in 1865; freedmen (freed enslaved Africans) celebrated at the Washington Race Course, today the location of Hampton Park, and each year thereafter. African Americans founded Decoration Day, now referred to as Memorial Day, at the graveyard of 257 Union soldiers and labeled the gravesite "Martyrs of the Race Course" on May 1, 1865. Black Charlestonians created this American tradition.

The site (Hampton Park) had been used as a temporary Confederate prison camp for captured Union soldiers in 1865, as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who died there. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, freedmen exhumed the bodies from the mass grave and reinterred them in individual graves. They built a fence around the graveyard with an entry arch and declared it a Union graveyard. On May 1, 1865, a crowd of up to ten thousand, mainly black residents, including 2800 children, proceeded to the location for events that included sermons, singing, and a picnic on the grounds, thereby creating the first Decoration Day-type celebration

Jesus said “…I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” (Matt. 16:18b).

This blog is being posted to replace the webpage of St. Barnabas Church in Newark. The church has been hijacked by a supply priest who wants editorial veto to anything published in the name of Saint Barnabas. He lacks consciousness of the importance of Black Africans who were a part of Christianity from its very beginning and played a spiritual role in spreading the Word. To this end I will try to comment on the church year from an African-American point of view.