Norton Launches Floor Series on the Need for Statehood Leading Up to D.C. Emancipation Day with Speech Highlighting D.C. Casualties of War
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today took to the House floor for the first of a three-day series of speeches calling for statehood for the District of Columbia leading up to D.C. Emancipation Day on Thursday, April 16. In today’s speech, Norton focused on official government figures that show the District has outpaced many states in casualties in the nation’s wars, even though D.C. residents have no vote in the House and no Senators.
Norton, in her floor statement, said, “D.C. citizens have secured the vote everywhere they have fought for their country. They secured the vote for the people of Iraq. They secured the vote for the people of Afghanistan. They secured the vote for citizens throughout Europe and the Middle East. But here to this day in 2015, more than 150 years after Lincoln freed the first slaves in the District of Columbia, the residents of the District of Columbia are still not free. They will not be free until they become citizens of the 51st state of the United States and until their war dead are honored as the war dead of other states are honored: by going to war on the vote of the people, including of their own representative, coming back, and being able to vote themselves.”
D.C. Emancipation Day commemorates April 16, 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln freed 3,100 enslaved African Americans in the District. Norton will also go to the floor tomorrow, April 15, during morning debate at 10:00 a.m., and on Thursday afternoon for a special order hour.
