None of these claims included the Black narrative, but what was once Union Cemetery is now a sprawling, 60-acre park in predominantly white Charleston, which amid lush gardens, ponds, a gazebo and fountain sits a bronze plaque acknowledging the park as the site of the first Memorial Day and where thousands decorated the graves of Black soldiers who were re-buried there after Confederate soldiers interred them in a mass grave in 1865.

Blight said the discovery led him to other stories in the Charleston Daily Courier and the New York Herald Tribune—both newspapers published stories about the final days of the Civil War, where Blacks celebrated the North’s victory over the South on Charleston’s prominent Meeting Street.

Vivid in detail, the book includes notes of the New York Herald Tribune reporter’s personal account of the celebrations that led to today’s most eye-opening event: Blacks decorating the graves of their fallen soldiers who had been reburied in what was then called Union Cemetery, which is today Hampton Park.

From 1876, after white Democrats took control of South Carolina politics and the Lost Cause (the other Confederacy) defined public memory and race relations, the day’s racecourse origin vanished, according to Blight’s account in the New York Times in 2011.

However, many historians agree that Memorial Day’s origins are deeply rooted in the Civil War and Blight’s account of the first celebration in Charleston has gained the attention of scholars and mainstream news organizations.