Allison, actually I DO remember America's first Memorial day. Ironically, cuz from 6th grade until I graduated high school -- I lived three 1/2 blocks from Hampton Park in our, "movin' on up" neighborhood in Charleston, SC (I call it that, because it was an exclusively white neighborhood to which we moved from downtown off King St. where the Black folk lived then -- now totally gentrified (as Mr. Baldwin once said, "Urban Renewal is Negro Removal"), with us being the second Black family to buy a house there (the first Black family was my sister's first husband's, guess he was glad to see a beautiful, Black girl moving into the hood and snagged her. Didn't last though, they divorced years later after having two kids -- long story). There used to be a big zoo there, with a grunting lion we could hear all the way to our house!

And of course, you're right about Wade Hampton. After all, during those times the neighborhood was absolutely, strictly white. Here's some of his history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Shirts_(United_States)

But Black folk in Charleston did repudiate Hampton's legacy in 2014, by dedicating a statue of Denmark Vesey in the middle of Hampton Park. I was there. Given Charleston's, Black Majority built that damned city from colonization, through the "old," Jim Crow -- but has never paid homage to any of us -- I had to be present. Gentrification is the least of American economic sins, since it follows a long and indisputable legacy of consistent wealth extraction from people of color. Black people built this nation and have almost nothing to show for it. First I was pissed, then I saw the repudiation -- and it was good.