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Norton to March in Emancipation Day Parade After Speaking at Emancipation Day Breakfast This Morning

April 16, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today will help lead the annual D.C. Emancipation Day Parade beginning at 11:00 a.m. along Pennsylvania Avenue, starting at Fourth Street and ending at Freedom Plaza. Norton this morning spoke at the annual D.C. Emancipation Day Prayer Breakfast. Emancipation Day commemorates April 16, 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln and the Congress freed 3,100 enslaved African Americans in the District with the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862. Norton said the District was proud to be the first in the United State to be free from slavery, but that Emancipation Day focuses on the reality that present-day District residents have not yet tasted the same freedom as their neighbors across the Potomac River. Norton also praised D.C. Council Member Vincent Orange for leading the drive to revive Emancipation Day as an important and historic occasion in the eyes of the city after having been forgotten for many years, and for an occasion that provides an incentive to continue growing the statehood movement.

"I am encouraged on this D.C. Emancipation Day by the tremendous momentum we continue to build for statehood despite working in a Republican-controlled Congress," Norton said. "We have set records with our statehood bill, which received a record-breaking number of original cosponsors, and just last week broke a new record in total cosponsors. Emancipation Day has provided me with an occasion all week, which I have called ‘D.C. Emancipation Week,' to lay out the arguments for statehood on the House floor, pointing out the repeated insults and denials of equal rights to D.C. residents. Emancipation Day sends a message to the Congress that we will not stop our work in Congress until the District enters the Union as the 51st state."