Eleanor Holmes Norton: “A week from Tuesday will be what we call Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia. We use that occasion to point out…”

“A week from Tuesday will be what we call Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia. We use that occasion to point out the continued inequality of the residents who live in our Nation's Capital. Emancipation Day was the day when Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in the District of Columbia. Yes, there were slaves working in the District of Columbia. It was considered a Southern State. He freed them 9 months before the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves. Yet the residents of the Nation's Capital remain less free than any other Americans. Even without statehood, however, the people of the Nation's Capital have, indeed, made progress. Madam Speaker, I want to discuss the problems and the progress, especially as we come close to the point when we will bring our D.C. statehood bill to the floor and the House will vote whether to make the District the 51st State. {time} 1915 We recognize we were the last to be free because we are not free yet. We won't be free until the District of Columbia becomes the 51st State of the United States of America. Now, I recognize, of course, there are no slaves living in the District of Columbia today. But there is not a single free and equal citizen resident of the District of Columbia. I cannot help but think of the stories that were told me of my great- grandfather, a runaway slave from Virginia. I am a third-generation Washingtonian.…”