April 16 – Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C.

April 16, 2022

Posted on April 16, 2022

This is an update of my post published on April 16, 2011:

Free at last! On this date in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, freeing thousands of enslaved persons in the District of Columbia and paying the slave owners around $300 per freed person. Of course, the act also made slavery illegal in the U.S. capital.

April 16 is a legal holiday in Washington, D.C., although events commemorating the Emancipation Act are generally held on convenient days during mid-April, rather than the 16^th itself. This year the 16^th is a Saturday, a great day for a celebration!

Nine months after signing the Compensated Emancipation Act into law, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. He thus made slavery illegal everywhere in the U.S. and freed all enslaved persons.

However, as you may recall, the nation was torn apart at that point, and the southern states, being in rebellion against the U.S. and having set up their own country, didn’t follow the dictates of Washington, D.C.! It took time for enslaved people to even hear about the Emancipation Proclamation, and I bet that, when some people heard rumors that they had been declared free, they hardly dared to believe those rumors. Because of the lag between the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the news of such, let alone actual freedom, emancipation is celebrated on various days from March through July in states and territories including Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Find out more…

Check out the stories of people who remembered slavery—stories of extraordinary “ordinary” people who survived the horrors of human bondage and expressed what it was like to be “a slave no more.”

Here are some audio stories.

Teens will appreciate The 1619 Project.