8 South Carolina counties to observe Confederate Memorial Day
South Carolina is one of the few states that officially observe Confederate Memorial Day, and only eight of its 46 counties also give their government workers paid leave for the day, May 10th, each year.
A survey of all 46 counties by The State newspaper determined that these counties will close in observance of the holiday: Allendale, Anderson, Cherokee, Colleton, Dillon, McCormick and Oconee. Of the counties participating, only Allendale has a largely African American population. Other states observing Confederate Memorial Day are Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina. Not all celebrate it on the same day.
The first shots of the Civil War were fired in South Carolina, and the state’s official declaration justifying secession cited the “hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding states to the institution of slavery” as an immediate cause.
Joseph Alley, a former Methodist minister whose family has direct ties to the Civil War, said the holiday should come to an end. “The past needs to be put in the past,” he said.
“It was a terrible, terrible time in the history of our country,” Alley said, “and I can thoroughly understand why people of color, who were central to the fight over whether they could be chattel or not, could look back and think, ‘My, my, How could people who call themselves Christians do this?’”
https://www.apnews.com/8033366bffb74f738adb7e28e0e9e4ce
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