Memorial Day, May Day, and the Responsibility We Inherit
By: DonYeta Villavaso-Madden, Equity and Anti-Racist Strategist
As Memorial Day and May Day passed this year, I found myself reflecting on the rituals of remembrance that accompany both observances. One honors military personnel who died in service to the nation. The other commemorates workers and organizers whose sacrifices helped secure many of the labor protections we now take for granted.
Though they emerge from different histories, both observances ask us to recognize a common truth: many of the freedoms, opportunities, and dignities we enjoy today came at a tremendous cost. Yet after the ceremonies ended, the speeches concluded, and the holidays passed, I found myself sitting with a question that felt increasingly difficult to ignore: Is remembering enough?
America is a nation deeply rooted in remembrance. We preserve monuments, observe holidays, visit memorials, and tell stories of those who sacrificed for causes larger than themselves. Through these rituals, we acknowledge that many of the rights and opportunities we enjoy today were secured through the courage, labor, and sacrifice of others. Remembrance is how societies express gratitude. But remembrance also invites a deeper question: How do we honor sacrifice after the ceremonies have ended?
Why We Remember
Memorial Day originated in the years following the Civil War, when communities gathered to decorate the graves of fallen soldiers with flowers, flags, and wreaths. Originally known as Decoration Day, the observance evolved into Memorial Day and eventually became a federal holiday dedicated to honoring military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.
At its core, Memorial Day is a national act of remembrance. It asks us to acknowledge that many of the freedoms and institutions we benefit from today were secured through sacrifice. It reminds us that citizenship carries both privileges and responsibilities and that the cost of freedom has often been borne by others.
Yet Memorial Day also invites us to consider what responsibility we bear for the freedoms others secured and the work previous generations undertook to make this nation more just.
Why May Day Matters in the United States
Many Americans are familiar with Labor Day, but far fewer know the origins of May Day or its connection to the United States.
In the late nineteenth century, American workers organized to demand an eight-hour workday, safer working conditions, and greater protection from exploitation. At the time, twelve- to sixteen-hour workdays were common, workplace injuries were frequent, and labor protections were minimal or nonexistent.
The movement reached a turning point in Chicago in 1886 during a series of labor demonstrations that culminated in the Haymarket Affair. Violence erupted, resulting in deaths, injuries, and the controversial prosecution and execution of labor leaders. The event became a defining moment in labor history and ultimately inspired the international observance of May Day.
Among the figures who emerged from this era was Lucy Parsons, one of the most influential and often overlooked labor organizers in American history. A labor activist, writer, and public speaker of African, Indigenous, and Mexican ancestry, Parsons devoted her life to organizing workers, challenging economic inequality, and advocating for people excluded from power.
Long after Haymarket faded from public attention, she continued fighting for labor rights and economic justice, reminding us that labor history is also a story about race, gender, belonging, and democracy.
The significance of Haymarket spread around the world. In solidarity with the Haymarket Martyrs, labor organizations across the globe adopted May 1 as International Workers’ Day. Ironically, a movement born in the United States became an international observance while largely fading from public memory in the country where it began.
Following Haymarket and the growing association of May 1 with labor organizing and worker unrest, political leaders sought a labor holiday that celebrated workers while distancing itself from the controversy surrounding May Day. Labor Day became America’s official labor holiday, while May Day gradually disappeared from mainstream public observance.
The marginalization of May Day in the United States illustrates how collective memory itself is shaped by politics, culture, and power. What societies choose to commemorate—and what they choose to forget—often reveals as much about the present as it does about the past.
The Organizers We Forget
Lucy Parsons later became associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), often known as the “Wobblies.” Founded in 1905, the IWW sought to organize all workers—regardless of race, nationality, gender, immigration status, or skill level—into what they called “One Big Union.”
At a time when many labor organizations excluded Black workers, immigrant workers, women, agricultural workers, and unskilled laborers, the IWW advanced a radically inclusive vision of worker solidarity. They argued that workers shared common interests regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, or occupation and that economic justice required collective action across those divisions.
Because of this approach, the IWW became a target of government surveillance, employer retaliation, arrests, imprisonment, deportation efforts, and violence. Their history reminds us that efforts to build multiracial coalitions and challenge concentrated power have often been met with resistance.
“America remembers soldiers. America remembers workers. Too often, we forget the organizers. Yet many of the rights we enjoy today exist because ordinary people sacrificed for a future they would never fully experience themselves.”
May Day reminds us that many workplace protections we now take for granted—including the eight-hour workday, workplace safety standards, overtime protections, child labor restrictions, and collective bargaining rights—were not inevitable. They were secured because people organized, advocated, and sacrificed for a future they might never fully experience themselves. The story of the IWW illustrates a lesson that echoes throughout American history: Progress can be won. Progress can also be lost.
While Memorial Day asks us to remember those who sacrificed in defense of freedom, May Day asks us to remember those who fought to make freedom, dignity, and opportunity more accessible in everyday life. Together, they remind us that progress has always depended on people willing to act on behalf of future generations.
Sacrifice Beyond the Battlefield
The connection between Memorial Day and May Day becomes clearer when viewed through the broader lens of American history. Again and again, people fought for ideals they themselves were not fully permitted to enjoy.
Black veterans returned home to segregation. Japanese American soldiers served while their families remained incarcerated. Chinese workers helped build the nation’s infrastructure while being denied citizenship. Women, Indigenous communities, labor organizers, and countless others fought for rights and opportunities that future generations would benefit from more fully than they could themselves. The lesson is clear: the people who make the sacrifice are not always the people who receive the benefit.
Labor history and civil rights history are often treated as separate stories, yet they are deeply intertwined. Many of the same systems that restricted voting, housing, education, and citizenship also shaped who could organize, who received legal protections, and who benefited from economic opportunity.
Freedom and access are not the same thing. Justice and inclusion are not the same thing. A nation can declare itself free while entire communities continue to wait for the promises attached to that freedom to materialize.
Why This Matters for Equity and Anti-Racism Work
This is why May Day belongs in conversations about equity and anti-racism. The questions raised by labor organizers more than a century ago remain remarkably relevant today:
- Who benefits from opportunity?
- Whose labor is recognized and rewarded?
- Who carries the greatest burdens?
- Who remains excluded from systems designed to create prosperity? These are labor questions. They are also equity and anti-racism questions.
When we examine today’s racial wealth gap, disparities in health outcomes, educational opportunity, housing access, employment mobility, or involvement with the legal system, we are often looking at the cumulative effects of generations of unequal access to opportunity.
The wealth gap is not simply a story about income. It is a story about labor, access, policy, exclusion, and opportunity. It reflects generations of people who worked, contributed, served, and sacrificed, yet were not afforded equal access to the benefits of their labor.
At a time when debates about democracy, labor rights, voting rights, civil rights, and belonging continue to shape our communities, these questions remain relevant. The freedoms many people fought to secure are not self-sustaining. Every generation must decide whether it will preserve, expand, or diminish them.
Progress Paid in Blood Can Be Undone
History reminds us that progress is rarely permanent. The expansion of voting rights, labor protections, civil rights, disability rights, and other democratic freedoms has often been followed by efforts to limit, narrow, or reinterpret those gains.
The right to vote itself—once reserved primarily for white male property owners—was expanded through generations of organizing, advocacy, litigation, and sacrifice. Its history reminds us that access to democracy has never been automatic and should never be taken for granted.
The arc of progress is not self-sustaining simply because a law is passed, a right is recognized, or a movement achieves a victory.
“Progress paid in blood can be undone.”
That reality is precisely why remembrance matters. But it is also why remembrance alone is insufficient. If we honor those who sacrificed for freedom, dignity, justice, and opportunity, then we must also accept responsibility for protecting and strengthening what they fought to secure. Otherwise, remembrance risks becoming little more than ritual while the very gains people sacrificed to achieve slowly erode over time.
From Remembrance to Responsibility
Whether the sacrifice occurred on a battlefield, a picket line, a bridge in Selma, a union hall, a courtroom, or a jail cell, the underlying question remains the same: What responsibility do we bear for the freedoms others helped secure?
At Columbia Legal Services, we often work with people whose rights exist in theory but remain inaccessible in practice. Whether the issue involves farmworker rights, conditions of confinement, disability access, public benefits, housing stability, tribal sovereignty, language access, or economic justice, the work often begins with the same realization: Rights promised on paper are not always rights experienced in practice.
Legal aid itself emerged from the recognition that justice cannot depend on a person’s income, race, language, disability, immigration status, or social position. Equal justice requires more than legal rights. It requires meaningful access to those rights. In that sense, legal aid is part of a long tradition of expanding access to the promises embedded in our democracy.
Sankofa and the Responsibility We Inherit
The Akan concept of Sankofa originates among the Akan peoples of present-day Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Often represented through Adinkra symbolism depicting a bird reaching backward for an egg carried on its back, or through a stylized heart-shaped design, Sankofa is commonly understood through the proverb: “It is not wrong to go back and fetch what has been forgotten.”
Sankofa is not an invitation to live in the past. It is a reminder that wisdom, lessons, and unfinished responsibilities often reside there. The purpose of looking back is not nostalgia. It is understanding. It is accountability.
In many ways, both Memorial Day and May Day embody the spirit of Sankofa. They ask us to remember those who sacrificed before us—not so that we can merely honor them, but so that we can better understand the responsibilities we inherit from them.
The purpose of equity and anti-racism work is not to revisit history for its own sake. It is to understand how history continues to shape the present and to determine what responsibility we have for the future.
Every generation inherits both the victories of those who came before us and the unfinished work left behind. Sankofa challenges us to ask whether we will be good stewards of that inheritance and what responsibility we bear for carrying it forward.
The challenge is determining what that work looks like in our own sphere of influence. For some, it may be defending the rights of marginalized communities. For others, it may be advocating for fairer systems, organizing for change, confronting inequity, or creating opportunities where barriers once existed.
Whatever form it takes, stewardship requires more than gratitude. It requires action.
At a minimum, we owe previous generations remembrance. But remembrance without action risks becoming a vain ritual. The question before us is not whether we remember. The question is what we will do with the progress others have secured.
In the spirit of Sankofa, we must carry forward the lessons, sacrifices, and responsibilities entrusted to our care. The most meaningful tribute we can offer those who came before us is not simply to remember them. It is to continue their work.
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