Today is a holiday in Washington, D. C. Public schools and local government offices are closed. It’s Emancipation Day.
Since 2005 it’s been a public holiday to mark the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, granting freedom to 3,100 enslaved persons in D. C. . The act passed nine months before Lincoln’s famous Emancipation Proclamation liberating slaves in the South. Continue reading