This is your annual reminder that Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day, and it was started by African Americans.

In the last year of the Civil War, the Confederates turned the Washington Racecourse in Charleston into an open-air prison camp. Nearly 300 Union soldiers died there and were dumped into a mass grave.

After the war ended, local Black workers dug up the bodies and reburied the soldiers in a proper cemetery.

They built a fence around it, whitewashed it, and put up an arch that read “Martyrs of the Racecourse.”

Then around 10,000 people, mostly formerly enslaved Black people, along with some white missionaries and teachers, marched around the racecourse in a parade. They sang, listened to speeches, held picnics, and watched Union soldiers do drills.

That was the beginning of Decoration Day. Three years later, a white man tried to take credit for it.

That’s the version of history you were taught.

Now you know the real one.