Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

by Kate Masur

The process of repealing racist laws in the District began with a clause in the Emancipation Act itself. In a section suggested by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, the act instructed the commission charged with assessing the value of slaves to receive testimony “without the exclusion of any witness on account of color.” Congress soon made a more direct thrust at repealing the capital’s black codes. A new law, proposed by Senator Wilson and signed by Lincoln on May 22, 1862, established a system of public schools for Black children and provided that “all persons of color … shall be subject and amenable to the same laws and ordinances to which free white persons are.” Then, at Sumner’s behest, a separate measure in July 1862 declared that, “in all judicial proceedings in the District of Columbia there shall be no exclusion of any witness on account of color.”