The Washington Informer, April 17th, 2019: Freedom School bridges D.C. Emancipation Day’s past and present
In commemoration of D.C. Emancipation Day, One DC and We Act Radio hosted a discussion, movie screening and a series of workshops last Tuesday centered around the local holiday’s significance in the ongoing fight for educational and housing equity.
The six-hour event, titled “Emancipation Day Freedom School,” took place at THEARC in Southeast and explored April 16, 1862, in the context of African Americans’ 400-year struggle for self-determination, widely believed to have started with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Jamestown in 1619.
Keynote presenter and internationally renowned historian C.R. Gibbs schooled an audience of nearly 100 organizers and city residents about the decades of grassroots pressure and institutional pushback that eventually led to the passage and signing of the D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act, which freed more than 3,000 enslaved Africans in the district less than a year before President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
“Every year, we commemorate D.C. Emancipation Day. This year, we want to [also] commemorate 400 years of inequality starting from Jamestown, and tie the history of emancipation with the first arrival of enslaved Africans,” said Kelly Iradukunda, key organizer of the Emancipation Day Freedom School and ONE DC’s People’s Platform, a compilation of solutions to issues affecting long-term residents, single mothers, returning citizens, and other marginalized groups.
Iradukunda said the “What Happened 2 Chocolate City?” plays a role in galvanizing people to fight against the external forces perpetuating inequality.
“The film screening shows the housing and income issues that people of color face in the district today,” she said. “We have to get people who are directly impacted [by inequality] to fight for their rights and what they deserve.”
A study released this spring by National Community Reinvestment Coalition determined that 20,000 black D.C. residents had been displaced between 2000 and 2013. By 2015, black Washingtonians accounted for less than 50 percent of the population.
