内容摘要：Tahar Rahim poses for photographers at the photo call for the film ‘Alpha’ at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Tahar Rahim poses for photographers at the photo call for the film ‘Alpha’ at the 78th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Trucks and vans carrying around 60 displaced families arrive in their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)A man fires into the air from one of the trucks carrying some of the 60 displaced families who, supported by an NGO, are returning to their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

A man fires into the air from one of the trucks carrying some of the 60 displaced families who, supported by an NGO, are returning to their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)A Syrian man unloads a truck as around 60 displaced families, supported by an NGO, return to their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)A Syrian man unloads a truck as around 60 displaced families, supported by an NGO, return to their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

Trucks carrying around 60 displaced families arrive in their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)Trucks carrying around 60 displaced families arrive in their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

Trucks carrying around 60 displaced families gather on the highway as they head to their village, Kafr Sijna, after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, on a highway north of Kafr Sijna, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

Trucks carrying around 60 displaced families gather on the highway as they head to their village, Kafr Sijna, after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, on a highway north of Kafr Sijna, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)“What happened in Charleston does have the right to claim to be first, if that matters,” Blight

As early as 1869, The New York Times wrote that the holiday could become “sacrilegious” and no longer “sacred” if it focused more on pomp, dinners and oratory.In an 1871 Decoration Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery abolitionist Frederick Douglass said he feared Americans were forgetting the Civil War’s impetus: enslavement.

“We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation’s destroyers,” Douglass said.His concerns were well-founded, said Ben Railton, a professor of English and American studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. Although roughly 180,000 Black men served in the Union Army, the holiday in many communities would essentially become “white Memorial Day,” especially after the rise of the Jim Crow South, Railton told the AP in 2023.