Emancipation Day Parade (in pictures)
By • April 11, 2016 0 1704
The District of Columbia celebrates April 16 as Emancipation Day. On that day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia. That act would free about 3,100 slaves nine months before Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation, becoming the country’s first freed from the institution of slavery.
View our photos from the Emancipation Day Parade up Pennsylvania Ave. by clicking on the photo icons below.
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- Members of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers reenactment group parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. The group commemorates the service of nearly 180,000 black soldiers in the Civil War. | Jeff Malet
