50 Years of Home Rule

Celebrate 50 Years of Home Rule during Civic Learning Week at DC Public Library! Civic Learning Week (March 11-15) is hosted annually by iCivics and seeks to highlight the importance of civic education in sustaining and strengthening constitutional democracy in the United States. Here in D.C., Civic Learning Week has a special importance. That is because the right to vote wasn't always a right for D.C. residents. From 1874 - 1973, D.C.'s right to self-govern, otherwise known as Home Rule, was removed by Congress. It wasn't until 1974 that D.C. was able to show up to the polls to vote for Mayor and D.C. Council. 

2024 is another big election year and exercising your right to vote is not only an opportunity to make your voice heard, it is also an opportunity to honor the incredible advocates who fought for this right. Throughout the week you are invited to check out resources about Home Rule, learn about ways you can be more involved in your community, visit your neighborhood library for events and more.

Since the earliest days of our nation, residents of the capital city have fought for the right to self-government, also known as home rule. The Constitution gives Congress, not D.C. citizens, control over Washington, D.C. For most of the nineteenth century, Congress allowed D.C. a degree of freedom. Residents elected their own local government officials. Yet only white, male landowners had the right to vote. In 1867, however, Congress granted Black men the right to vote in D.C. elections. Following the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted Black men the right to vote across the country, D.C’s white leadership and Congress became fearful of Black Washingtonians’ growing political power. In 1874, Congress took D.C. Home Rule away. For decades to come, the city would be managed by three federally appointed Commissioners, and all decisions were ratified by Congress. 

Washingtonians fought unsuccessfully for home rule for decades. Between 1948 and 1964, five different bills were introduced and failed in Congress. By this time, civil rights leaders in D.C. saw home rule as central to the struggle for citizenship. After turning out by the thousands for the March on Washington to support Black voting rights across the country, they couldn't vote in their home city. In 1965, D.C. leaders wrote to their friend and ally, Dr. King, to recruit him for their cause. King spent three days in  D.C., meeting with community leaders and leading rallies in support of racial justice and D.C. Home Rule. New leaders—including Marion Barry, founder of the Free D.C. movement, Julius Hobson, and comedian/activist Dick Gregory—shook up the status quo and inspired citizens to protest D.C.’s status in many ways, from street protests to public hearings. 

To increase local control over D.C.’s affairs, in 1967 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Walter Washington as Mayor-Commissioner and a nine-member Council. D.C. became the first U.S. city with a Black chief executive. In 1968 Congress granted Washingtonians the right to vote for their Board of Education, the first local election in nearly a century. In 1971 the District of Columbia Delegate Act re-instituted a nonvoting Delegate to represent the nation’s capital in the House of Representatives. With support from civil rights allies including Coretta Scott King, Walter Fauntroy was elected and held the position for three decades. In 1973, Congress finally passed the Home Rule act. In 1974, D.C. elected its local government for the first time in more than 100 years. Walter E. Washington was elected Mayor, and longtime civil rights and anti-poverty activists, almost all of them Black, were elected to the D.C. Council.