Yes, of course.
Your fantasies or actual factual reality
I'll take actual factual reality.
"On May 1, 1865, in
Charleston, South Carolina, the recently freed Black population held a parade of 10,000 people to honor 257 dead Union soldiers. The soldiers had been buried in a mass grave at the Washington Race Course, having died at the Confederate prison camp located there. After the city fell, the freed Black population unearthed and properly buried the soldiers, placing flowers at their graves. The event was reported contemporaneously in the
Charleston Daily Courier and the
New-York Tribune.[20] Historian
David Blight has called this commemoration the first Memorial Day. However, no direct link has been established between this event and General
John Logan's 1868 proclamation for a national holiday.
[21][22][14]"
Three years before proclamation but, of course, in the 1860s there would be no credit given to former slaves who honored their liberators.