PAPERBACK ISBN: 0-88258-207-0      $23.95

218 pages; 6 x 9 inches

Pub Date: May 2002

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Washington, D.C., in the Emancipation Era

Edited by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

On April 16th, 1862, nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, enslaved Africans residing in the District of Columbia were freed by an act of Congress. The District of Columbia Emancipation Act, signed by President Abraham Lincoln and funded to the tune of nearly a million dollars, not only ended slavery in the Nation’s Capital, but for the first time offered monetary compensation to both slaves and slave owners. This revised edition of award-winning author and historian Elizabeth Clark-Lewis’s 1998 volume, published to commemorate the 140th anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, provides readers with critical research and information about this often overlooked and underexamined aspect of local and national history. Presenting seven essays from the proceedings of a community-based conference held in Washington, D.C.,

FIRST FREED sheds new light on the capital city’s unique role in the perpetuation and demise of slavery in the United States.

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