Norton Says D.C.’s Celebration of the Ending of Slavery Here is Cloaked in Irony
Washington, D.C. - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton will mark the 150th anniversary of the District of Columbia Emancipation Day at two events. She will make remarks at a prayer breakfast Monday, April 16, 2012 at the Willard Hotel at 8:30am, and, at 11am, she will serve as one of the Grand Marshalls for the 150th Anniversary of the District of Columbia Emancipation Day Parade, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue from 3rd street to Freedom Plaza.
"The District is justified in making a big deal of the 150th anniversary of the first emancipation of slaves in the United States which occurred here in the District of Columbia," Norton said. "But as we commemorate their freedom, we are obligated to make plain the irony that the city of the first liberated has become the last to win the same freedoms all other Americans now enjoy."
The Congresswoman will pair her events with a resolution she will introduce in the House "recognizing the enduring cultural and historical significance of emancipation in the Nation's capital on the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's signing of the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act."
That act, signed in 1862, ended slavery in the District eight and a half months before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Norton's great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, a runaway slave from Virginia, was among thefreed slaves in the District in 1862.
Published: April 16, 2012