In honor of the Memorial Day holiday, we’re posting our weekly reading list one day early. From the real roots of the holiday to creationist irony and a whole bunch in between:

How did Memorial Day really start? From Yale’s David Blight at NYT back in 2011:

After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.” . . . The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African-Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic. They were themselves the true patriots.

What does Memorial Day celebrate?

From the “you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up” department: Ark Encounter sues a contractor for—you guessed it—rain damage, at LC.

Winner of the week: Man shoots himself in the testicles. When he’s at the hospital getting treated, a balloon of weed falls out of his butt. Wow. At KTVU.

Taylor students protest VP Pence’s commencement address, at FA.

• I stick by it: This protest does not mean much for the wider world of Trump-loving white evangelicals.
• Do liberal evangelicals stand a chance? Not if this analogy holds true.

The times they are a’changin. Only 12% of Americans want public schools to teach only the Bible and not other religious books, at TH. HT: MC.Will charter schools feel the Bern?

• Senator Sanders released his “Thurgood Marshall Plan” for education.
• A summary at EdWeek.
• Good question: PK12 asks why Bernie didn’t mention Teach For America. He used to love the organization. Does he still…?
• Curmudgucrat Peter Greene: Bernie’s plan “doesn’t suck.”
• Why isn’t a progressive politician a progressive educator? Here at ILYBYGTH.

Surprising results from Religion In Public: Yes, abortion is a polarizing issue. But more Catholics are polarized in favor of abortion rights than against.

Take another look…

• That seemed hard to believe, so we got some follow-up from the study’s author.

Howard Fuller on segregation and charters, at T74.

the reality on the ground is that, for poor black children and many poor brown children, if we don’t figure out how to get good schools for them in the areas in which they live, they are not going to have them. And I do not foresee how, in the near future, for the vast majority of them, integration is a real option. I think it’s the kind of thing that people talk about on college campuses, that liberals talk about when they get together, or conservatives, who always talk about it. But on the ground, we’ve got to figure out how to get to good schools for most of them in the communities in which they live.

Is “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg bringing us a new religious left?

• Interview at WaPo.
• One pastor says no, Mayor Pete is just repackaging the religious right. At Vox.
• We say no, because…hockey. Here at ILYBYGTH.

100 years ago today: Prof. Sutton on the birth of American Protestant fundamentalism, at NYT.

the time was right for a revolution in American Christianity. In its own way, this new movement — fundamentalism — was every bit as important as the modernity it seemingly resisted, with remarkable determination. . . . Although fundamentalists claimed to represent the traditional faith, they were pioneering innovators who remade Christianity for tumultuous times. There was little “conservative” about them.