In recognition of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Compensated Emancipation Act, which freed all slaves in the District of Colombia on April 16th 1862, a panel of history professors and local civil rights advocates discussed the history of emancipation in D.C. and slavery’s legacy in American politics on Tuesday morning. Although each speaker celebrated emancipation day as a victory for human rights, each was sure to remind the audience that freedom is an ongoing struggle.

“Emancipation is an ongoing process, and we still have a long way to go,” started the event’s moderator, Rev. Ray Kemp. “1862 is not that far away. We have to find some way to own this emancipation.”

Kemp went on to discuss his own work as a civil rights advocate in D.C. and how he, in synecdoche for the country as a whole, had to come to grips with his ancestor’s role as slave-owners.

To give a historical perspective of D.C.’s role in national emancipation, Professor of History Chandra Manning told stories of the contraband phenomenon. During  the civil war, Union General Benjamin Butler refused to torn over escaped slaves under the fugitive slave act, citing that war gave him the authority to seize enemy property. To house the runaway “contraband,” contraband camps were constructed wherever union soldiers stopped–there were two in D.C. and more in the surrounding area.

Although conditions in the contraband camps  varied, their presence weakened slaveholder’s grasp because they provided safe havens for escaped slaves, explained Manning. More importantly for emancipation, the camps, especially those around D.C. put former slaves in direct contact with union solders who started to advocate for emancipation as a wartime goal.

Maurice Jackson, also a History Professor, summarized the place of blacks in modern D.C. In the 1950s, the restrictive covenants that determined where blacks couldn’t live in the city were removed, and in 1957, the city was the only major American city with a black majority. In 1970, 71 percent of the city was black; now it is under 50 percent, according to Jackson.

Read the rest of this entry »

The editors figured you should know something about the federal enclave that you will call your home almost nine months out of the year. See below for a general history and profile of the District, from D.C. voting rights to race politics, and stay tuned for profiles of individual neighborhoods on Wednesday.

L’Enfant’s wet dream

As a consolation prize to the South for assuming Northern war debts, the capital city would take root firmly below the Mason-Dixon line.

In 1790, Congress asked President Washington to select the location. He gladly obliged with a location on the Potomac River that would be navigable to ships and just so happened to lie less than 20 miles from his house. The new city absorbed the old port towns of Georgetown and Alexandria (the latter returned to Virginia in 1847 because they were afraid D.C. would ban the slave trade).

Washington then appointed a Frenchman, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, to design the rest of the city. The planner offered up the city of grand avenues and plazas that we know today. Unique among American cities, they recall a European imperial capital.

However, L’Enfant was a temperamental prima donna, and Washington fired him before he could see the city developed. The designer of the capital city died in poverty. And they named an ugly modernist development near the Mall after him.

Taxation without representation

In a freak accident of history, the capital of the free world has no vote in its national legislature. The U.S. Constitution only gives votes to states and their residents. But the District of Columbia is a “federal district,” and the Congress functions as its local government.

Why ever would Congress need its own private fiefdom, you ask?

In 1783, angry Continental Army soldiers marched on Independence Hall in Philadelphia to demand wages the Congress had neglected to pay. At the time, there was no national army and Pennsylvania took a pass on confronting a mob of over 400 backcountry yokels.

Read the rest of this entry »