My family are from Kentucky, and we take flowers to relatives' graves on Memorial Day, whether they were military or not.
Thank you so much, Kobi, for that history. i had no idea. i have been reading some of the articles that have been written because of the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War. The NY Times has been doing a series, and Time Magazine had a wonderful article a month or so ago about how our understanding of the war, particularly its causes, has been fashioned by ideology and politics over the years.
This information is powerful because it shows how allied freed slaves were with the Union side. Part of the conservative refashioning of the public memory is that Gone With the Wind narrative of the slaves staying with their former Masters, feeling as if they were better off with them than at the mercy of northerners who would exploit them.
i love knowing that this is another tradition added to the common culture by African Americans. And it's something to see how that has been erased.
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