Object: Emancipation in the District of Columbia (P 1403)
About the Collection Item: The document is subtitled, “Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, in answer to a resolution of the House Representatives, of the 11th of January, transmitting the report and tabular statements of the commissioners appointed in relation to emancipated slaves in the District of Columbia.” The document Includes a detailed accounting of the process of determining the outcome of petitions as well as an indexed list of petitions filed (showing names of claimants and enslaved).
The slave trade was outlawed in Washington, DC through the Compromise of 1850. However, enslaved people were not freed at that point. On April 16, 1862 President Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act (formally, An Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor within the District of Columbia, 37th Cong., Sess. 2, ch. 54, 12 Stat. 376), which immediately freed enslaved people in the District of Columbia. The act also allowed enslavers to petition the government to be paid for the release of enslaved people as well as now-freed people to petition for funds if they decided to emigrate (leave the United States).
This document from 1864 lists the names of the enslavers, the people for whom they were petitioning to be paid, and the amount a slave auctioneer from Baltimore had decreed that they were worth. Through the Act, more than 3,100 enslaved people were freed; they are known as the First Freed.
While public celebrations were held by African Americans in Washington, DC until 1901, in years afterwards April 16 was not publicly acknowledged as a day of commemoration until a Washingtonian named Loretta Carter Hanes, in researching the Emancipation Proclamation in the 1990s, came across reference to the Compensated Emancipation Act. Hanes started a grassroots effort to bring attention to the Act and to have the public as well as school children learn more about the unique path to freedom for enslaved Washingtonians. She advocated for 14 years for Emancipation Day to be a legal holiday.
Thanks to her tireless efforts, as of April 16, 2005 Emancipation Day has been celebrated as a legal public holiday in—and only in—Washington, DC. Loretta Carter Hanes’s papers reflecting this effort are among those held by the DC History Center.
Link to Catalog Record: P 1403
Link to full-document PDF: P 1403
Holding Repository: DC History Center
DCPS Cornerstones Curricular Connections
Social Studies
Grade 12 DC History and Government - Compensated Emancipation
English Language Arts
Grade 5 ELA - Become a Museum Curator
Grade 8 ELA - Unheard Voices
DCPS Standards
Social Studies
12.DC.7: Students describe the effect the Civil War had on life in Washington, DC, and they explain the effects of Compensated Emancipation and the Emancipation Proclamation on the city.
English Language Arts
W.8.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
RI.5.7: Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.
Common Core Standards
Literacy in History/Social Studies
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
DC History Center publications
Washington History is the only scholarly publication devoted exclusively to the history of our nation’s capital. First published in 1989, the magazine replaced the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1897-1989). Washington History is filled with scholarly articles edited for the general reader. It is written and edited by distinguished historians and journalists, offering a rich array of images as well as reviews and short features. The following articles support study of the issue of Compensated Emancipation.
“Teachable Moment: The Winding Path to Freedom under the District of Columbia Emancipation Act of April 16, 1862,” by Joseph P. Reidy
Washington History Vol. 26 No. 2, 2014.
""Some Satisfactory Way": Lincoln and Black Freedom in the District of Columbia," by Edna Greene Medford
Washington History Vol. 21, 2009.
""I held George Washington's Horse: Compensated Emancipation in the District of Columbia," by Mary Mitchell
Washington History Vol 63/65, 1963/1965.
"Loretta Carter Hanes, 1926–2016," by George Derek Musgrove
Washington History Vol. 29, no. 1, 2017.
"Loretta Carter Hanes," by Katrina Ingraham
DC History Center blog post, 2021
Related DC History Center collections
"Experiments in Freedom" co-produced by the DC History Center and African American Civil War Museum, is an installment in the DC History Center’s Context for Today series of online conversations with thoughtful and thought-provoking historians, activists, journalists, and community members.
How is this complicated history explored in DC classrooms today? What can we learn about the specific enslavers and those freed by the Act? How is this commemoration of a Civil War-era experiment in freedom inextricably linked to the current fight for DC statehood?
DC educator William Jones and historian Emancipation Day activist CR Gibbs join moderator Amara Evering to examine compensated emancipation's complicated legacy and contemporary relevance.
Jane Levey, historian at the DC History Center, talks with reporter Amara Evering about when local slaveowners were compensated for the emancipation of the people they had owned, and what lessons today's abolitionists can draw from that injustice.
This online exhibit from the National Archives offers a contextual explanation, scans of the original 1862 An Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor in the District of Columbia, and a transcription of the document.
Directed by Susan C. Lawrence, Elizabeth Lorang, Kenneth M. Price, and Kenneth J. Winkle, and published by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This extensive site offers a historical context and an alphabetical list of petitions.
Object: Fare collector (1990.080.01)
About the Collection Item: This is a “register” employed by conductors collecting fares on the Washington & Georgetown Railway streetcar system in the 1890s. Riders inserted paper tickets—used until 1920 when they were replaced with tokens—into the register for punching. The brass cylinder collected the resulting “chads.” Our records show that after years of use, the register became the property of John Fleming, an employee of Capital Traction (later Capital Transit), Washington’s street-car operator. He passed it on to Edward D. Merrill, company president and member of the Columbia Historical Society (the predecessor organization of the DC History Center), who deposited it with us.
The Washington and Georgetown Railway Company (or Washington and Georgetown Railroad Company) was the first streetcar company to operate in Washington, DC. Its operations started in 1862, beginning with horse-drawn cars on tracks going across the District from Georgetown to the Navy Yard, with additional lines running up and down 7th Street NW and SW, and 14th Street NW. In 1890, the company switched to the cable cars format, where a continuously running cable, or wire rope, pulled the car along. On September 21, 1895, the company was purchased by the Rock Creek Railway and the two formed the Capital Traction Company. By 1901 the system was electrified, and by 1933 the District's multiple streetcar companies merged to form Capital Transit. Capital Transit became DC Transit in 1955, and operated the streetcars until their last run in January 1962.
Transportation options shape how the built environment of a city develops. Streetcars turned "suburbs" like Cleveland Park and Union Town (now, historic Anacostia) into city neighborhoods where residents could live and easily work downtown, or across town. The evolution of power sources - from equine-motored cars to cable cars to electrified street railways - improved the reach of the system while also, ironically, limiting it: Railways that required tracks could only go where tracks have been laid. When the 19th-and-20th-century streetcar era ended in 1962, the bus became king before the DC metro system opened in 1976.
Link to catalog record: 1990.080.01
Link to multiple-images PDF:
Holding Repository: DC History Center
DCPS Standards
1.33 Describe the goods and services that communities need (e.g., grocery stores, transportation, public safety), and identify how they are provided by local government and private businesses.
3.6 Identify different wards within Washington, DC, and compare their distinct features, including significant roads, businesses, public transportation lines, landmarks, businesses, parks, memorials, public artworks and public buildings
3.9 Explain the impact of at least one significant urban planning decision in the history of Washington, DC on the health and composition of different communities in Washington, DC (e.g., redlining, public transit planning, the construction of highway 295).
3.10 Evaluate modern proposals to alter the urban geography of Washington, DC, and take action to support or oppose a change.
DC History Center publications
Washington History is the only scholarly publication devoted exclusively to the history of our nation’s capital. First published in 1989, the magazine replaced the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1897-1989). Washington History is filled with scholarly articles edited for the general reader. It is written and edited by distinguished historians and journalists, offering a rich array of images as well as reviews and short features. The following articles support study of the collection item and the general theme of the impact of transportation developments on Washington, DC.
"On the Shelf," by David Wood
Washington History Vol. 34 No. 1, 2022.
"Washington's Nineteenth Century Citizens' Associations and the Senate Park Commission Plan," by Ed Hatcher
Washington History Vol. 14 No. 2, 2002/2003
"Public Transportation in Washington, D.C. before the Great Consolidation of 1902," by John H. White, Jr.
Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Vol. 66/68, 1966-1968
"A Catalog of Suburban Subdivisions of the District of Columbia, 1854-1902," by Matthew Gilmore and Michael R. Harrison
Washington History Vol. 14 No. 2, 2022/2003
"Models of Beauty and Predictability: The Creation of Wesley Heights and Spring Valley," by Diane Shaw Wasch
Washington History Vol. 1 No. 2, 1989
"Crime on the Bus: Bus Driver Safety in Postwar Washington, D.C.," by William Jordan Patty
Washington History Vol. 25, 2013
Object: Campaign poster, from the Thomas L. Lalley Pilot District Project files (MS 0885)
About the Collection Item: This poster was created in support of Erieka Bennet's campaign for election as a Youth Representative to the Citizens Advisory Board of the Pilot District Project. The election was held on September 11, 1970; 19-year-old Bennett, a member of Marion Barry's People's Party slate, was elected. While her time in DC was brief (she moved to DC in her late teens and by 1973 was living in Atlanta), in the years following, she moved into international diplomacy of the African Diaspora and served as advisor to the president of Ghana. Bennett is the founder of the Diaspora African Forum of the African Union.
What was the Pilot District Project?
The Pilot District Project (PDP) was a federally funded experiment in community policing. The program launched in 1968 with broad goals for police reform and citizen participation in a predominantly African American area of Washington, D.C., and was an early effort to intervene in the ways that police and residents interacted on the streets. Mired in internal struggle and public clashes, the PDP ended without fanfare when the funding ran out.
The PDP launched with broad goals for police reform and citizen participation. The city’s Third District (now most of today’s Ward 1) was selected as the pilot location. Although the PDP faced criticism from some District residents—resentful of attempts by white government officials to exert control over Black neighborhoods—they were active in public meetings and campaigned for positions on the advisory board.
What did the PDP accomplish?
The project enacted several important innovations during its five-year run, including 24-hour police stations, citizen ride-alongs, and a series of bulletin boards to share information about police work. The program also introduced police sensitivity training along with Spanish-language training. Looking back more than 50 years later, the PDP serves as a timely reminder that the struggle to repair relationships between police and African Americans is not new.
However, the PDP was a short-lived, controversial program. Conceived as a pilot, it never expanded to other cities. By pretty much any standard, it was not a resounding success. But does that mean it was a failure? Looking back at this project, which operated under both liberal and conservative administrations, helps us understand how citizens and the police force have long disagreed about how we use public space.
Why study the Pilot District Project?
The PDP is a study both in federal intervention in local affairs and a look at grassroots activism. The PDP citizens advisory board was Marion Barry’s first elected office in D.C. Other prominent participants included Carlos Rosario (the leading Latino community activist in Washington, D.C. during the 1960s), Charles I. Cassell (chair of the Black United Front and founder of the D.C. Council of Black Architects), David A. Clarke (served on the first elected Washington City Council), Calvin W. Rolark (founder of the United Black Fund, Inc. and the Washington Informer), and Walter Fauntroy (Citizens Committee for Equal Justice). This is a compelling and timely story of urban policing, community participation and resilience, federal intervention, and a program with good intentions that perhaps was never up to its herculean task.
Link to collection-level record for MS 0885 - Thomas L. Lalley Pilot District Project files
Link to poster PDF: Erika
Link to additional downloadable campaign posters and other materials from MS 0885 - Thomas L. Lalley Pilot District Project files and MS 0907 - Robert Shellow Pilot District Project files
Holding Repository: DC History Center
DCPS Standards
8.42 Evaluate the status of Washington, DC in the federal government, the impact on the rights of the citizens and residents of the District and the movement for DC statehood.
8.43 Identify a local, national or international issue connected to human rights, conduct relevant research, identify and assess policy options, and construct a public policy proposal designed to improve the situation.
DC History Center publications
Washington History is the only scholarly publication devoted exclusively to the history of our nation’s capital. First published in 1989, the magazine replaced the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1897-1989). Washington History is filled with scholarly articles edited for the general reader. It is written and edited by distinguished historians and journalists, offering a rich array of images as well as reviews and short features. The following articles support study of the collection item and the general theme of the impact of transportation developments on Washington, DC.
"Black and Blue: The D.C. City Council vs. Police Brutality, 1967-69," by John W. Hechinger and Gavin Taylor.
Washington History Vol. 11, No. 2 (1999)
"Carlos Manuel Rosario," by Amber Wiley
Washington History Vol. 30, No. 1 (2018)
"Mobilizing the Community in an Era Before Social Media," by Brian Rohal
Washington History Vol. 28 No. 1 (2016)
In 2018, the DC History Center (then known as the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.) co-produced an exhibit with the National Building Museum: Community Policing in the Nation’s Capital: The Pilot District Project, 1968-1973. The exhibition website includes links to high resolution downloadable images, interviews, and a short trailer film about the exhibition.
CG 8225: The People and the Police
Documentary film held by the National Archives and Records Administration that captures the early, turbulent years of OEO'S experiment in police-community relations in Washington, DC.
Group Processes in Police-Community Relations, By Kenn Rogers, Ph. D.
119 Cong. Rec. 2192 1973, January 26, 1973
Available via Proquest
…"Solution," indeed, took the form of a "law and order" campaign for the Presidency by Richard Nixon in 1968, with its strong racial overtones and the implication that more cops, more guns, more toughness, no more coddling, and presto-no crime. It did not work out that way. Something else must be tried… Across the country of America, there is a large gap between police and inner city residents. On the establishment side there is an opinion that police are justified by performing their duties by virtually whatever means necessary-on the nonestablishment side it is very widely understood that some police will do anything necessary whether justified or not. Washington, D.C., a city of 70 per cent Blacks, the capital of the nation, the place where Congress and the President dwell, is no exception to the rule of police-citizen misunderstanding and alienation on both sides. To this end there are two sides with no bridge between them-Where do we go from here? (The Pilot District Project Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 1). This paper describes efforts to build such a bridge and in the process to develop data pointing to where to go from there. It is an analysis and evaluation of four four-day intensive working seminars conducted by the District of Columbia Government Pilot District Project (PDP). Designed to enable participants to explore the nature of authority and the problems encountered in its exercise, each seminar was attended by police officers working and civilian citizens living in Washington D.C.'s Third Police District.”
Object: Lesbian and Gay Voters for Mayor Barry campaign pin (2008.075.028)
About the Collection Item: This Lesbian and Gay Voters for Mayor Barry campaign pin, removed from the Bruce Pennington papers (MS 0764.IV) and cataloged under MS 0764.XXII - Button, is part of the overall Rainbow History Project collection (MS 0764). Marion Barry successfully campaigned for mayor in the elections of 1978, 1982, 1986, and 1994, serving 16 years as the second and fourth 20th-century mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999. While undated, the pin is most likely related to Barry's second campaign for mayor; Ann. R. Kinney served as treasurer for the Citizens to Reelect Marion Barry for the 1982 campaign and as finance chairman for 1986 campaign.
Barry also ran for and served on the DC City Council for 15 non-consecutive years, as an at-large member (1975-1979) and representing Ward 8 from 1993-1995 and 2005-2014.
Barry's relationship with DC's LGBTQ community was for many years very strong, as demonstrated in an October 24, 1986 endorsement in the Washington Blade signed by numerous prominent LGBTQ activists and paid for by the Washington Gay and Lesbian Community for Mayor Barry. However, while the DC Council passed the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009 (Bill 18-482), as a sitting council member for Ward 8, Marion Barry cast the lone vote against legalizing gay marriage in DC.
Link to series-level catalog record: MS 0764.XXII - Buttons
Link to images PDF: 2008.075.028
Holding Repository: DC History Center
3.31 Evaluate the legacy and contributions of significant historical and contemporary community and elected leaders in Washington, DC including but not limited to Walter Washington, Marion Barry, Sharon Pratt and Muriel Bowser.
3.35 Identify multiple ways people in the Washington community can influence their local government.
3.28 Evaluate the impact of significant political movements, including labor movements, the Civil Rights movement, the Disability Rights movement, LGBTQ+ liberation and women’s suffrage on life for District of Columbia residents
DC.26 Analyze the impact of the Lavender Scare on LGBTQ+ life in Washington DC and the actions taken by specific individuals and organizations (e.g., William Dorsey Swan and the Gay Liberation Front-DC), to increase visibility and equality for LGBTQ+ individuals in Washington.
DC.27 Analyze the reasons for and the efficacy of different forms of political activism, and analyze the cultural achievements of Black and immigrant Washingtonians during and between the world wars.
DC History Center publications
Washington History is the only scholarly publication devoted exclusively to the history of our nation’s capital. First published in 1989, the magazine replaced the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1897-1989). Washington History is filled with scholarly articles edited for the general reader. It is written and edited by distinguished historians and journalists, offering a rich array of images as well as reviews and short features. The following articles support study of the collection item and the general theme of the impact of transportation developments on Washington, DC.
"Homosexual Citizens": Washington's Gay Community Confronts the Civil Service," by David K. Johnson
Washington History Vol. 6, No. 2 (1994)
Related DC History Center collections
This object is part of a series (MS 0764.XXII) that is part of the Rainbow History Project Collection (MS 0764). For an extensive look at the Rainbow History Project, its holdings, and relationship with the DC History Center, visit the Exploring the Rainbow History Project resource guide.
The DC History Center collections include many other assortments of political buttons and pins, as well as political ephemera. A selection includes:
The DC Public Library's People's Archive offers digital access to the entire run of the Washington Blade. In 2014, the Blade offered a timeline of Marion Barry's engagement with DC's LGBTQ community, from his first term as mayor through his last as a DC City Councilmember.
OutHistory offers a timelines of the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance from 1971-1990 and from 1991-2010, which traces the political impact of this DC-based gay rights group dedicated "to securing the 'full rights and privileges' of citizenship for the gay community through 'peaceful participation in the political process."
A connection between LGBTQ rights and issues, and the issue of DC statehood, is made explicit in "Becoming Douglass Commonwealth.
The first half of this video, commissioned by the Mayor's Office for Emancipation Day 2021, explores the history of DC disenfranchisement. The one-hour television special features Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Rep. Steny Hoyer, Rep. James Clyburn, Rep. Jamie Raskin, The Honorable Eric Holder, The Honorable Muriel Bowser, The Honorable Vincent Gray, The Honorable Adrian Fenty, The Honorable Anthony Williams, The Honorable Sharon Pratt, Phil Mendelson, Linda Cropp, William Lightfoot, Ted Leonsis, Chef Jose Andres, John DeGioia, and more.
Beginning at 32:20, the film addresses how statehood would affect the lives of current DC residents by identifying eight areas of impact, including
The video then addresses some of the arguments against DC statehood.
Object: XVIII Festival Latino Americano, Washington, D.C., Julio 25-31, 1988 (P 2082)
About the Collection Item: This program was distributed during the 28th annual festival honoring the Latino/a/x community, held July 25-31, 1988. Aimed at a bilingual audience, the program text is both in English and Spanish, without translation. The text includes advertisements as well as announcements for specific events occuring during the festival.
What is now called the Latino Festival began after the 1970 Census—the first to try to identify individuals of Hispanic origin or descent—counted 17,561 Latina/o/x people in DC. But those numbers were a far cry from the actual number. Because city services are delivered in large part based on census numbers, undercounting would have disastrous effects on residents who were already underserved. The Census undercount was a galvanizing force for advocates of representation and civil rights.
The Latino Festival was established in 1970 to bring together disparate communities with a common goal: literally to show the city and its government that they existed. That celebration continues more than 50 years later as Fiesta DC. The Latino Festival addressed the issue of defining community and interests. To many Washingtonians, Black and White, these 20th-century immigrants appeared to be a monolithic, Spanish-speaking population competing for turf in Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, and Columbia Heights. But for the people—who moved here from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Panama—they were anything but monolithic. Their nationalities and their class and race differences, not to mention their varying reasons for leaving behind their homeland, were stronger markers of identity than commonalities of language.
Link to catalog record: P 2802
Link to full document PDF: P 2802
Holding Repository: DC History Center
DCPS Standards
1.3 Explain the ways in which different populations including but not limited to Latinx, Black, Asian, white, immigrant, religious, LGBTQ+ and Indigenous communities, have shaped and defined the community of Washington, DC.
3.26 Explain the reasons for the growth of Asian American, Latinx, East African, and Caribbean communities in Washington, DC, and efforts taken by different individuals to claim a voice in the city, such as the organization of the Latino festival or the role of a community organization.
3.37 Evaluate the legacy of immigration in the District and explain the contributions of different Washingtonians to the cultural landscape of Washington, DC including but not limited to Latinx, European, Asian American and African American communities.
3.38 Analyze how groups maintain their cultural heritage and how this heritage is manifested in the symbols, traditions and culture of Washington,
DC3.38 Analyze how groups maintain their cultural heritage and how this heritage is manifested in the symbols, traditions and culture of Washington, DC
5.56 Analyze methods of impacting political change, and develop a plan for taking action to address an issue of local, national, or global concern.
US2.16 Evaluate the reasons for and consequences of the rise in Asian, European and Latin American immigration to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, including the varied experiences of different individuals
DC.28 Evaluate the global forces that spurred the growth of a Latinx community in Washington in the 1960s. DC.29 Analyze the rise of Latinx-owned businesses and non-profit organizations and the methods by which different individuals have exercised political power in Washington, DC.
DC History Center publications
Where can a researcher currently find records and collections that reflect DC’s vibrant and diverse Latino/a/x community? How can we encourage new research and amplify their stories? While we have published related new research in our magazine, Washington History, we know our library holdings are slim. So where could we direct interested researchers to find additional materials? Check out this guide for a materials at the DC History Center and other local repositories.
Washington History is the only scholarly publication devoted exclusively to the history of our nation’s capital. First published in 1989, the magazine replaced the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1897-1989). Washington History is filled with scholarly articles edited for the general reader. It is written and edited by distinguished historians and journalists, offering a rich array of images as well as reviews and short features. The following articles support study of the collection item and the general theme of the impact of transportation developments on Washington, DC.
"Tirarlo a la Calle/Taking It to the Streets": The Latino Festival and the Making of Community," by Olivia Cadaval and Rick Reinhard
Washington History Vol. 4, No. 2 (1992)
"Carlos Manuel Rosario," by Amber Wiley
Washington History Vol. 30, No. 1 (2018)
"Becoming “Wachintonians”: Salvadorans in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area," by Ana Patricia Rodriguez
Washington History Vol. 28, No. 2 (2016)
“’Yes, It Can Be Done’: A Photographer’s Record of Latino Washington, D.C.," by Rick Reinhard
Washington History Vol. 29, No. 1 (2017)
The blog has several posts about the documentation of DC's Latino community; notably, that there is very little material in official repositories. You can read more about efforts to address this archival silence through the resources below.
"Latino/a/ Outreach Advisory Group Convenes to Address Archival Silences," by Mariana Barros-Titus, Aug. 3, 2022
"Guide to Researching Latino/a/x DC Gets a New Look," by Anne McDonough, Oct. 19, 2021
DC History Center Collections
As noted in Researching Latino/a/x DC, there are currently few resources in our holdings. Explore the following links, arranged by material type: