Emancipation Day will be celebrated today a day earlier. Since it is a federal holiday, on April 16, and occurs after the federal April 15TH Tax Day, the deadline for filing taxes falls on April 18, 2011. There are three criteria which would move the filing of taxes to a later date: April 15 falls on a Saturday, falls on a Sunday, or falls on a federal holiday. In this case that federal holiday is Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C.
At the beginning of the Civil War, race-based slavery was still legal and federally recognized in government and state law statutes in Washington, D.C.–the capital of the nation and the Union. On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Emancipation Act, freeing enslaves in the city. He would not issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing enslaves living in Confederate states, until nine months later.
Though race-based slavery was a major bone of contention across the land, at the beginning of the Civil War the abolition of slavery was not a goal of the President and the Union, but, it developed over time as an issue that divided the country and eventually tore the nation into two factions, North, and South.
The emancipation came as a response to the many enslaves coming into the city from Maryland and Virginia, two states that border on its boundaries. Many of the enslaves thought they would be free, but because of the Fugitive Slave Act, many of them were arrested, imprisoned in jail, or returned to their owners. Instead of freedom, they found themselves without sanctuary, able to be sent back to a living death of chattel slavery.
Abolitionists and their congressional sympathizers found this cruel and wrong and advocated for a law that would free enslaves living in Washington, D.C. On April 16, 1862 when President Lincoln signed the act, there was much celebration among the black people living in the city.
But, this act of freedom was the bitter with the sweet:
“On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. Passage of this law came 8 1/2 months before President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The act brought to a conclusion decades of agitation aimed at ending what antislavery advocates called “the national shame” of slavery in the nation’s capital. It provided for immediate emancipation, compensation to former owners who were loyal to the Union of up to $300 for each freed slave, voluntary colonization of former slaves to locations outside the United States, and payments of up to $100 for each person choosing emigration. Over the next 9 months, the Board of Commissioners appointed to administer the act approved 930 petitions, completely or in part, from former owners for the freedom of 2,989 former slaves.
Although its combination of emancipation, compensation to owners, and colonization did not serve as a model for the future, the District of Columbia Emancipation Act was an early signal of slavery’s death. In the District itself, African Americans greeted emancipation with great jubilation. For many years afterward, they celebrated Emancipation Day on April 16 with parades and festivals”. SOURCE
On January 4, 2005, the city of Washington, D.C. declared April 16 an official holiday.
Original copies of the District of Columbia Act here (page one), and here (page five).
Since Emancipation Day falls on a Saturday, the city is observing it Friday. Per the IRS, when the Tax Day conflicts with a Washington, D.C. holiday, federal law mandates for tax day to be pushed to the next business day which would be Monday, April 18.
This happened before in 2007, when the deadline for filing taxes was April 17, since April the 15 fell on a Saturday with Emancipation Day following that Sunday.
So, today while many of you are working on those last-minute taxes, take time to pause and reflect on those who suffered under bondage and fought for their rights as free citizens in a land that had denied their humanity for so long.
Celebration of the Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia by the Colored People, by F. Dielman, April 19, 1866.
Ann
