Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Republicans in disarray!

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Books are my comfort food!

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Celebrate the fucking wins.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Open Thread: As It Was Once Known, Decoration Day

Open Thread: As It Was Once Known, Decoration Day

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… After a long siege, a prolonged bombardment for months from all around the harbor, and numerous fires, the beautiful port city of Charleston, South Carolina, where the war had begun in April, 1861, lay in ruin by the spring of 1865. The city was largely abandoned by white residents by late February. Among the first troops to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the Twenty First U. S. Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the formal surrender of the city.

Thousands of black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters’ horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some twenty-eight black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders’ race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy’s horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”…

Following the solemn dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: they enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches, and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantry participating was the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite. The war was over, and Decoration Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been all about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic, and not about state rights, defense of home, nor merely soldiers’ valor and sacrifice….

Reader Interactions

125Comments

  1. 1.

    Adam L Silverman

    Blight’s excellent article highlights and shows one of the worst examples of trying to write African Americans out of the historical narrative, thereby further reducing their agency and trying to ensure they were objects to be manipulated and maneuvered around and not humans to be engaged with.

  2. 2.

    LAO

    Trump is a cancer. Seeing his and President Obama Memorial Day tweets side by side, makes me miss Obama more than I thought was possible.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @LAO: As I said over at Wonkette, this country is not worthy of Barrack Obama, especially after what he said in Hiroshima.

  7. 7.

    MattF

    Hard to imagine, but I think Der Trump is actually getting worse and even more offensive as time goes on. If what we’re seeing now is the ‘Presidential’ version…

  8. 8.

    Punchy

    @MattF: I think Trump’s in “Oh SHIT!” mode, where he may be realizing that, should he actually be elected, there’s no real vacations, no stress-free time, no chances to golf everyday and hang with hot broads for FOUR YEARS. A shitlaod of travel, gravitas, and solemnity for 4 years. And he’s freaking out and ready to tank this…

  10. 10.

    eemom

    My Dad, born in 1933, called it Decoration Day.

    That Trump tweet is so vile I can’t believe it’s real.

  11. 11.

    HRA

    What Trump is proving is he does not want to be president and/or never got into it to win.

  13. 13.

    Felanius Kootea

    @MattF: There’s a part of me that believes that Trump honestly doesn’t want to do the job of president (but can’t come out and say so after all the effort to win the primaries). So what he’s doing is getting more offensive and outrageous in hopes that something will save him. But he’s finding out that there’s no amount of racism, sexism or xenophobia that will turn off his core base. And that the Republican Party is filled with selfish, spineless sociopaths who would put a skunk in the White House if they thought they could control that skunk and make it vote the way the party’s donor base wants. I was pleasantly surprised when Mary Matalin registered as a Libertarian following Trump’s win; I thought she and lizard creature James Carville had no principles whatsoever.

  14. 14.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    This Times’ item slipped though fridays’s news cycle.

    A sense of paranoia is growing among his campaign staff members, including some who have told associates they believe that their Trump Tower offices in New York may be bugged, according to three people briefed on the conversations.

    Imagine the FIRESTORM if Clinton or Sanders were bugging their own offices.

    Of course, IOKIYAR.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @eemom:

    I was born not quite a decade after your dad and grew up calling it “Decoration Day.”

    And, while I take some pride in the breadth and depth of my vocabulary, I find I have no words to express my utter contempt for and loathing of Trump. What a vile, despicable little mannikin.

  16. 16.

    Dork

    @Punchy: I think “tank” or “no tank” will be obvious by his Veep choice. Tabbing Fat Christie means hes for reals, choosing Ted Nugent or Neil Boortz means he’s calling Uncle.

  17. 17.

    smith

    @Dork: I think his choice of VP will the first test for the R establishment to see if their hopes for controlling him are even feasible. Many of his choices for advisers to the campaign have been downright loony.

  18. 18.

    john fremont

    @Felanius Kootea: Yes, Looking through my Facebook feed and seeing how much shit is being directed at Obama and his visit aka “apology” tour, to Hiroshima, Trump may realize that nothing he can say that can shake the core True Belevers who’ve rallied to him.

  19. 19.

    Dork

    @eemom: Not that it matters, but Trump’s tweet is from 2015, before he got into politics. I’d hope he would change his tone at this point.

  22. 22.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I grew up only hearing “decoration Day” and spending a portion of it at Union Cemetery East of St. Paul tending graves of my ancestors. I still call it Decoration Day more than Memorial Day. That concept is lost in the chest thumping politics tacked onto the day.

    But then I still call the fridge an icebox (the kids always gave me grief for that) but have stopped calling the bus “the streetcar”

  23. 23.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    That’s a year old tweet of Trump’s, but there is no bottom to Trump’s crassness and self centeredness. A year ago I would have definitely put all of my money on a bet that his lack of any empathy or positive character traits as exhibited by that tweet would be automatically disqualifying as a serious presidential candidate, yet here we are. WTF GOP.

  24. 24.

    chopper

    I would like to wish everyone, including all haters and losers (of which, sadly, there are many) a truly happy and enjoyable Memorial Day!

    wait, what? this is for real what trump said? this is his honest to god memorial day message?

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    Yup, I often default to “icebox.” And “record player” (but not “Victrola” — I’m not quite that antique, though I do remember the little RCA dog Nipper and “His Master’s Voice”).

  29. 29.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    The stark contrast between the two tweets shows the distinction between graciously qualified to be a head of state, and loud, boorish asshole. It should be a campaign ad. Let it sit on a screen for all the honest world to feel. I’m sure lots of vets might be struck by the difference in tone.

  30. 30.

    gogol's wife

    I bow to no one in my contempt for Trump, but I think AL has done us a disservice by posting that year-old tweet. Let’s vilify Trump for what he’s doing right now!

  34. 34.

    Mustang Bobby

    @SiubhanDuinne: My dad refers to the CD player as the Victrola. He is fully aware of the technological advancement, but that’s what he calls a machine that plays recordings. I still refer to the thing in the kitchen that keeps food cold or frozen as the icebox.

  38. 38.

    Major Major Major Major

    @efgoldman: Emasculated (white) men who never got to be king shit of fuck mountain like they thought they would be when they were nineteen and want to blame minorities or somebody, anybody other than themselves and the policies of the Republicans they vote for? Sounds about right.

  39. 39.

    Shawn in ShowMe

    Posting a year old Trump tweet is not Anne’s finest hour. This year’s Trump tweet actually reads thus:

    Have a great Memorial Day and remember that we will soon MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

    Vacuous but harmless. There’s plenty of Trump idiocy to bitch about without ginning up outrage.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SiubhanDuinne: I have a victrola – it was my grandparents. Don’t really use it to play records anymore, though it works. I tend to use it as a side board.

  41. 41.

    gogol's wife

    @Mustang Bobby:

    Yeah, my CDs are really steampunk now. I love it.

    My husband and I are watching a miniseries from 1997 (love Robson Green!), and the cell phones they’re using, he said, “look like the Motorola walkie-talkie Sergeant Saunders uses to call in airstrikes.”

  42. 42.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: @chopper: I failed to note the date – it’s from last year. This year’s is

    Honor Memorial Day by thinking of and respecting all of the great men and women that gave their lives for us and our country! We love them.

    from 29 May 2016 link

    Still he said that last year and it’s vile and disrespectful.

  44. 44.

    gogol's wife

    @Adam L Silverman:

    My Moscow friends had a working gramophone on which they played vintage recordings of Chaliapin. They sounded fantastic! If you turned the lights down low, it sounded as if he was in the room with you.

  46. 46.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @efgoldman:

    I remember the logo/icon of the “recording angel” on Angel records. Didn’t Schwarzkopf and Legge found it, or run it, or something? Memory is foggy.

  49. 49.

    Shawn in ShowMe

    @amk:

    Nope, but last year he was only a tough-talking reality TV star. It’s like getting upset about the tweets from a villanous wrestler in the WWE .

  50. 50.

    TriassicSands

    As always, a classy message from Trump. What a beneficent fellow he is. I mean to include all of us losers and haters in his message is causing tears to well up in my eyes.

    It’s good to know that he was just as insufferable a year ago as he is today. We can always count on Trump to be boorish, crass, rude, and generally stupid.

  51. 51.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    When I was a kid my grandmother had a wind up Victrola and a bunch of records that were about a 1/4 inch think & only recorded on one side. We were never allowed to touch the player but my folks ended up with the records at some point & I played them on our record player as a kid. I bet that hurt the needle!

  52. 52.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SiubhanDuinne: No, this is a 1950s era electronic one. Its in a walnut case. The speakers are built into the front. The whole thing is about four feet long, two feet deep, and 3 and 1/2 feet high.

  53. 53.

    jerry

    @LAO:

    I went to the Little Neck Douglaston Memorial Day Parade and the only downside was seeing members of the Queens Village Republican Club wearing those stupid fucking “Make America Great Again” hats. Bill de Blasio appeared about 35 minutes behind Andrew Cuomo, so I guess they still hate each other.

  54. 54.

    Juju

    @Shawn in ShowMe: All you have to do is scroll further down his page of tweets for this weekend to see the crass, undignified garbage he spews on the Twitter.

  58. 58.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    The story of the duel-use copyright is long and convoluted.

    Should we let Mnemosyne know you were able to work in a Hamilton reference in an unlikely spot?

  60. 60.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Adam L Silverman:
    THOSE WERE CLAY?!? I always wondered what those were made of. Grandmas were all opera and classic. Had she been a jazz fan I probably would have taken the records for myself.

    I seem to remember some wax cylinders too but I never saw the device to play them on and have no idea what happened to them.

    @efgoldman:
    So maybe not clay but shellac? It was an odd material, I thought maybe Bakelite

  61. 61.

    ThresherK

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’ve always loved how “phonograph” was the name of the wax cylinder machine, the original. The older-fashioned sounding word Gramophone was a trademark which came later with the 78s.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: I always thought they were clay, because that’s what I was told. But its possible my parents misunderstood/misremembered my grandfather and they’re shellac.

  63. 63.

    SFAW

    @Shawn in ShowMe:

    Have a great Memorial Day and remember that we will soon MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

    Yeah, that’s so much better because it’s all about him. Again.

    The vile bastard is the epitome of the old joke about the guy on the first date, saying “But enough about me — what do YOU think of me?” I’ve met plenty of insecure people in my life, but none comes close to that asshole. If only the MSM had some stones, Trump would be consigned to the ash heap of history by September.

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Schlemazel Khan: I don’t have any wax cylinders. Though efg seems to think I may have it backwards and they were shellac. Either way that’s something different than vinyl.

  65. 65.

    SFAW

    @jerry:

    Yeah, but at least Andy used to live there. (Maybe he still does?) Did the parade end up at the driving range? Or at the Scobee (which no longer exists, I guess)?

  70. 70.

    SFAW

    @LAO:

    is there anything more f*cked up the NY politics?

    NY politics pales in comparison to the cesspit of evil/crazy/stupid which is the modern Republican Party.

  74. 74.

    Adam L Silverman

    @LAO: Florida politics. Louisiana politics. New Jersey politics. Texas politics. You want me to keep going?

  76. 76.

    ThresherK

    @LAO: It was wonderful. The best part was being up in the 200′ over the Hudson getting a nice, steady cross-breeze during a heatwave. After our Saturday ride, late late afternoon, we found a place with cannoli ice cream. Where has that been my whole life?

    Then at 11am the next morning it was already 90F and we were very pleased with ourselves for having gotten the ride in. Midday Sunday would be a great day for dehydration, heat exhaustion and sunburn.

  78. 78.

    eemom

    @Shawn in ShowMe:

    Nope, but last year he was only a tough-talking reality TV star.

    With due respect, that’s not true. Last Memorial Day he was a candidate for president, even if no one took it seriously at the time.

  79. 79.

    jerry

    @SFAW:

    The parade ended on the grounds of St Anastasia.

    @LAO: You make a great point. I find solace in the culture richness of NY. For me, John Perry Barlow put it best when he described New York as “the capital of experiences”. In spite of all the nonsense and insanity taking place all around us, I love this city so damn much. If I could just get my professional career back on track.

  81. 81.

    debbie

    @Shawn in ShowMe:

    Actually, the 2015 tweet was just a couple weeks before he announced his candidacy, so the presidency had to be on his mind.

    (He announced June 16th)

  83. 83.

    LAO

    @LAO: I’m confusing scandals, not sure I should have included anything related to the NYPD. But I still stand by the unbelievable corruption in NY politics.

    @ThresherK: where is this magical ice cream shop? asking for a friend.

    @jerry: I love NYC, but it can be a very tough town.

  93. 93.

    jerry

    @LAO: @SFAW:

    I don’t know if this comes as any surprise to either of you, but it surprised the Hell out of me when I learned that the Little Neck Douglaston Memorial Day Parade is the biggest Memorial Day Parade in the nation.

    Donald Trump is a malignant cancer in the soul of humanity and never before in my life have I rooted so hard for someone to lose an election. I can’t wait for the day when this raving, drooling ignoramus is finally swept into the trash can of history.

  94. 94.

    Adam L Silverman

    @LAO: Anybody can be corrupt and forced out of office, the real pros are corrupt, everyone knows it, and still manage to remain in office.

  98. 98.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: He is one weird dude and that’s saying something given some of the other currently serving governors out there.

  104. 104.

    Miss Bianca

    Speaking of book choices, has anyone here read anything by Roger Knight? I had a book he wrote called Britain Against Napoleon recommended to me. Apparently he’s also written a well-regarded biography of Nelson.

  106. 106.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: Not being from Maine, having only been to Maine once, and other than knowing the guy is a nut from current coverage, I’m not aware of the back story. Let me guess: abandoned as a baby at sea, found, and raised by wild lobsters, then rescued by semi-wild lobstermen as a teen, and raised in a loving foster home?

  111. 111.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Miss Bianca: Its not even my fourth language. First was English. Then Hebrew. Then Spanish. Then Arabic. Then French. Actually I also learned biblical Aramaic in there around the same time as Hebrew, and I could read some hieroglyphics in college when I was studying Arabic as I was taking Biblical Archeology. There’s also a smattering of Japanese, because of the martial arts training, and a bissel of German in there. And a wee bit of Gaelic too.

    Though, to be honest, I have trouble with just English these days.

  116. 116.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: That was a monstrous elegant set-down, sir, I applaud you! Whereas French actually *was* my second language – then Latin, then German, then Russian, then finally some Spanish. And just enough Irish to get me in trouble. And all of it mouldering from disuse, alas.

  117. 117.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Miss Bianca: I don’t use them much anymore. Other than the English. The Japanese gets used in the dojo, but its basically attacks, techniques, and body parts.

  118. 118.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: I like the piling on redshirt option.

    I spent today going from cemetery to cemetery in my dad’s home town. Graves of family who served during every war from 1812 on – here in central Wisconsin. The Revolutionary War and early vets are buried further east. One can get philosophical. Or just post this.

  119. 119.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: Tracking. I posted mine last night. Thought a bit about some friends and/or colleagues I wanted/needed to think about and remember, and basically just did not much at all.

  122. 122.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: Weird tradition that we have. I am the youngest person who takes part in it, so I am making every effort to remember everything. I believe that my nephew will want to know. Including things like the Civil War vet (was with Sherman from Vicksburg to the triumphal march through Washington D.C.) about whom his in-laws said “he has a great singing voice, but he doesn’t work too hard.”

  124. 124.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: I think that sounds wonderful. I wish we had had a similar one. I’m to the age now where I wish I knew these things about my family, and almost all the people who could tell me are dead.

  125. 125.

    J R in WV

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Today one of the main side-channels of broadcast TV here locally is running War Movies for more than 24 straight hours. Really yesterday, I just have a brief insomnia thing tonight.

    The station is GRIT and it’s being broadcast by the 3rd side channel of ABC affiliate WCHS.

    “The Big Red One” “In Country” “Raid on Rommel” “The Desert Rats” “Memphis Belle” “Letters from Iwo Jima” “The Sands of Iwo Jima” and a couple of others. I quit.

    Is that really a Memorial Day thing? Really? It seems coldly exploitive of Veterans both dead and alive to run war fiction all day long on Decoration Day. We didn’t go from cemetery to cemetery to decorate graves, but still… War Movies?????

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