Next fight, full voting rights

Hundreds of performers and spectators yesterday celebrated the 142nd anniversary of slavery’s end in the District with a parade and remarks remembering past achievements while looking to future goals.

City officials, high school bands and community groups celebrating D.C. Emancipation Day 2004 marched 10 blocks on Pennsylvania Avenue NW from the Mall to Freedom Square. Throughout the event, coordinated by the mayor’s office, participants called for full voting rights for D.C. residents.

“I am pleased to join with the citizens of the District of Columbia to celebrate the 142nd anniversary of emancipation in the District,” Mayor Anthony A. Williams said. “But with freedom comes responsibility. We need to pause, reflect and re-energize our commitment in the struggle for full and complete home rule and voting rights in the District.”

Frederick Douglass IV, great-great-grandson and namesake of the 19th-century orator and abolitionist, attended the event and said the elder Douglass would be proud of the progress that has been made.

“He believed in accentuating the positive,” Mr. Douglass said. “He would have commiserated the faith of those who have fallen by the wayside. Even though there’s still plenty of work to be done, he was not one to sit back and [dwell] on how bad things are.”

Dorothy Height, 92, president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, was slated to be the parade’s grand marshal, but was unable to attend after being briefly hospitalized with a cold. She was “very disappointed” that she did not participate, a NCNW spokeswoman said.

Miss Height, a revered civil rights activist who worked closely with Martin Luther King, this year was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Bush.

“[The events] make sure our unique history is preserved. D.C. was emancipated nine months before the rest of the country,” said D.C. Council member Vincent B. Orange, Ward 5 Democrat who introduced legislation to host the commemorative event. “We need to ask ourselves, ’Do we have full emancipation?’ I would say we don’t.”

Yesterday’s parade, along with a concert and a fireworks display, was part of a weeklong celebration that began began Monday The activities will culminate tomorrow morning with a service at Simpson-Hamlin United Methodist Church in Northwest.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s nonvoting representative in Congress, walked in the parade with signs that read “Taxation without representation.”

“If we’re going to march, we ought to be marching with every sign in this parade about the slavery that still exists in the District of Columbia, not about slavery that the Civil War got rid of and that the Emancipation Proclamation got rid of,” said Mrs. Norton, who can vote in committee as long as it is not a deciding vote, but cannot vote at all on the House floor.

“I’m certainly not free,” she said.

This was the first year the mayor’s office supervised the event. Mr. Williams’ proclamation for April 16 as a celebratory day will apply each year, according to spokeswoman Regina Williams.

Mr. Orange organized the parade in 2002, but there was no parade last year because of the war in Iraq.

The District’s Compensated Emancipation Act on April 16, 1862, preceded the nationwide Emancipation Proclamation by nine months. The first Emancipation Day was held April 19, 1866, and was a popular annual tradition until the early 1900s.

For high school groups such as the ROTC unit from Woodrow Wilson High School in Northwest, it was a time to shine.

“We’re here to look good, celebrate and show respect,” senior Kevin McClain, 17, said. “It’s your heritage; this is when you were freed.”

Shatoya Brown, 15, a freshman at Cardozo High in Northwest, said Cardozo’s principal dismissed students early and issued bus tokens for them to attend the parade.

“It is important to celebrate the freedom of slaves,” Shatoya said.

Spectators shared similar sentiments.

“It’s about freedom,” said District resident Tom White, 62. “We can’t forget where we came from.”