D.C.’s youths dance through Emancipation Day celebration at Freedom Plaza

D.C.’s youths dance through Emancipation Day celebration at Freedom Plaza

On an 80-degree Sunday afternoon, the D.C. region’s youngest performers took over Pennsylvania Avenue in waves of purple, pink and gold.

The Limitless Dancing Warriorettes — girls ages 4 to 17 from D.C., Maryland and Virginia — were the first in a series of young locals performing alongside floats and dancers from around the world at the District’s annual Emancipation Day parade. Leading the group in matching zebra-print leotards, the older girls waved with white gloves to the locals and tourists that crowded in the shade on either side of the road.

The Woodland Tigers majorettes came out in purple and pink; the D.C. Divas in pink and black; the D.C. Allstarz in orange tassels and rainbow bodysuits; and other teams followed suit.

Colorful costumes were part of the parade. This year marks the 162nd anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln signing a bill that ended slavery in the District.

It has been 162 years since slavery was abolished in the District, and residents turned out to celebrate, as they do every April, with young people front and center.

“It’s an important day; it’s something that they not only read about and learned about in school, but we are celebrating something today, because today something was given to us that we did not always have,” said Woodland Tigers coach Jordan Hawkes.

“It’s to celebrate our freedom, have fun and give back to our community,” said D.C. native Nicole Haynes, the coach of the Limitless Dancing Warriorettes.

Peruvian folk dancers participate in the parade.

Emancipation Day became a public holiday in the capital in 2005 and is celebrated every year around April 16, the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the District. This was the third time the Woodland Tigers, which includes girls from across the District, performed in the parade. Hawkes wanted them to understand “that living in such a progressive city like this, it is important to make sure that we are always supporting the culture.”

Why wear purple? “Because we’re royalty, of course,” Hawkes said.

The U.S. capital was once a city entrenched in slavery. The White House and Capitol buildings were built by at least 200 enslaved African American laborers. Across from the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and parallel to Sunday’s parade was once the “Yellow House,” a slave jail that sold people into slavery in the South. Today it is the site of the Orville Wright Federal Building.

In 1836, a visiting shoemaker from New England was appalled by this slave auction happening “beneath the shadow of the flag that waved over the Capitol.” Henry Wilson went on to become a senator, and as the Civil War raged in December 1861, he proposed a bill in Congress to eradicate slavery in D.C. and compensate enslavers with $300 per person they had enslaved.

The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on April 16, 1862 — releasing over 3,000 people from slavery. The District became the only U.S. jurisdiction to compensate enslavers. Nearly eight months later, on Jan. 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) joined Sunday’s parade, throwing green foam balls with “We are Washington DC” on them to onlookers. DC Vote had a float decked in signs reading “Long Live Go-Go” and “D.C. Statehood is Racial Justice.”

Signs urging statehood for the District were distributed during the parade.

Emma P. Ward, the 2011 Ms. Senior D.C., waved to onlookers. Ward, 79, moved to D.C. at age 15 from Alabama and teaches at Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington — the country’s first public high school for African American students.

“I came out to unite with the young people,” she said. “We don’t understand them and they don’t understand us because we don’t communicate. Once you open up and communicate with them, they really like it.”

Aric Deloatch, a 30-year-old D.C. native, followed his 9-year-old daughter and three nieces down the street as they performed for the Woodland Tigers.

“Kids are the future,” he said. “It means everything.”

Natalia Wallace, 15, from Hyattsville, Md., performed this year with the Limitless Dancing Warriorettes. Her team had another show on Saturday, but she said the downside of back-to-back performances in the heat was offset by the joy she and her friends found in dancing.

She said there was one phrase going through her mind, over and over, as they moved toward the finish line on Sunday:

“I’m getting there, I got this, I got this, I got this.”

The Limitless Dancing Warriorettes perform.