Memorial Day Speech Resources from the Congressional Research Service

 

The Congressional Research Service recently published the five-page report Memorial Day Speech Resources: Fact Sheet (5/12/2023) that may be of use to local officials, students and the rest of us honoring our nation’s war dead on Memorial Day. This report includes the following sections:

 

• History – Paragraph tracing its history as the post Civil War Decoration Day to the present.
• Legislation – Citations to the laws that created Memorial Day
• CRS Reports – Citations to reports on holidays, commemorations and US military casualty statistics
• Sample Congressional Speeches and Recognitions – Citations to sample speeches given in Congress to commemorate Memorial Day
• Presidential Proclamations – Information on finding Memorial Day proclamations from Presidents Biden, Trump, Obama and George W. Bush
• Statistics – Documents information available from the Defense Manpower Data Center and the Census Bureau on military deaths and veterans.
• What Can Americans Do to Participate in Memorial Day? – General information on national observances of Memorial Day

 Most of the citations listed in the Fact Sheet can be found through govinfo.gov. If you need help finding a specific citation listed in this report, contact the Alaska State Library at  Ask a Librarian. If you’d like to see what else the Congressional Research Service has published recently, visit CRS Search Results (congress.gov).