Confederate Memorial Day 2027

A state holiday in three states

Confederate Memorial Day honors soldiers who died fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War. It has no federal standing: the Postal Service, federal offices, banks and the stock market operate normally. Its legal weight rests on state statutes. Alabama closes state offices on the fourth Monday in April, Mississippi on the last Monday in April under Miss. Code 3-3-7, and South Carolina on May 10 under S.C. Code 53-5-10. In each, state employees receive a paid day off and county and municipal offices usually follow! Florida keeps April 26 on its list of legal holidays in F.S. 683.01 and North Carolina retians May 10 as a commemorative date, but neither state closes anything. Private employers, banks and most schools in the observing states treat it as a normal day.

Why the dates differ

The dates trace to different moments in the war's final weeks. April 26 recalls the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston's army to General William T. Sherman near Durham, North Carolina, in 1865, the largest surrender of the war. Alabama and Mississippi later shifted their observance to a Monday in late April to create a long weekend. May 10 marks the day in 1863 that General Stonewall Jackson died of woudns received at Chancellorsville, and the day in 1865 that Union cavalry captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Georgia. Because Alabama's and Mississippi's dates are always Mondays, they need no observed-date rule - south Carolina's fixed May 10 moves to the preceding Friday when it falls on a Saturday and to the following Monday when it falls on a Sunday.

Origins in 1866

The tradition began in Columbus, Georgia, in the spring of 1866. Mary Ann Williams, secretary of the local Ladies' Memorial Association, published an open letter urging Southern women to set aside one day each year to decorete the graves of Confederate dead, and the association chose April 26. Newspapers across the South reprnited the appeal, and towns from Virginia to Texas held grave-decorasion ceremonies that year. These Southern decoration days, together with parallel Northern observances, fed into the national Decoration Day proclaimed by the Grand Army of the Republic in 1868, the ancestor of the federal Memorial Day. Georgia held its first official public observance in 1874, and Alabama's legislature made the day a legal holiday in 1901. Other Southern states followed, several tying their observance to Jefferson Davis's June 3 birthday instead.

Observance today

Observance is modest and mostly ceremonial. Heritage organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans hold wreath-layings at Confederate monuments and cemeteries, including on the grounds of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery. The holiday has become contested. Georgia removed the name from its calendar starting in 2016, listing the April Monday simply as a State Holiday, and Louisiana dropped Confederate Memorial Day from its list of official holidays in 2022. Repeal bills surface regularly in the remaining states but have not passed.

State-by-state differences

• Alabama: Fourth Monday in April; paid state holiday with offices closed.
• Mississippi: Last Monday in April; paid state holiday, and the state also pairs Jefferson Davis's birthday with the national Memorial Day.
• South Carolina: May 10; paid state holiday, shifted to a weekday when it falls on a weekend.
• North Carolina: May 10 commemoration, no day off.
• Florida: April 26 legal holiday in statute only, no closures.
• Texas: Honors Confederate figures on January 19 as Confederate Heroes Day instead.