Each year in mid-April, Washington D.C. celebrates Emancipation Day to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the District. Schools and the Wilson Building, D.C.’s city hall, will be closed. What about the federal government?
On April 16, 1862, Congress and then-President Abraham Lincoln passed legislation to officially end the practice of owning slaves in the District of Columbia, freeing 3,100 individuals three years before the Civil War Ended and before the 13th Amendment banned slavery nationwide.
“I have never doubted the constitutional authority of Congress to abolish slavery in this district, and I have ever desired to see the National Capital freed from the institution in some satisfactory way,” Lincoln wrote in his declaration.
Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, as the Civil War waged into its third year. The proclamation mandated “that all persons held as slaves” within the seceding states “are, and henceforward shall be free,” according to the National Archives. It paved the way for a uniform ban via constitutional amendment, but at the time, it left loopholes for slavery to continue in the border states and in certain Southern states that had been overtaken by the North.
In Texas, word of Lincoln’s proclamation didn’t reach residents until two years later when union soldiers reached Galveston. That day, June 19, 1865, was celebrated as it still is today. Juneteenth is the newest holiday observed nationwide by the federal government.
That same year, states ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which said that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
By 1860, there were about 4 million slaves in the country. And even after slavery was declared officially unconstitutional, Black Americans faced racism and violence for decades through the post-war Reconstruction Era, Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights movement.
According to D.C. historians, on the first anniversary of Emancipation Day after the Civil War ended, the city’s Black community organized a parade. It wasn’t until 2005, however, that it became an official local government holiday.
More than 150 years later, the District celebrates Emancipation Day every spring with live music, parades and fireworks.
This year, the holiday falls on a Sunday, so D.C.-based government offices and services will be closed the following Monday. That means the Department of Motor Vehicles will be closed and D.C. Public Schools will not be in session on April 17.
As for federal employees, Emancipation Day is not an official holiday, so federal agencies and offices will be open on Monday, April 17, and employees will not be entitled to holiday pay.
There are 11 federal holidays recognized by the Office of Personnel Management. On these days, all non-essential government employees are off work, and most government offices are closed.
The next observed federal holiday is Memorial Day on Monday, May 29.
Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
