Why Isn't Washington, D.C. a State?

A new bill aims to make Washington, D.C. the U.S.'s 51st state -- but why wasn't it created as a state to begin with, and why have similar bills failed in the past? Learn the history of the District of Columbia in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey
brain Stuff Lauren bog obam here. On June, the U. S.
House of Representatives passed historic legislation that would transform the
District of Columbia into the nation's fifty first state. The
bill would give the district's current seven hundred and five thousand,

(00:23):
seven hundred and forty nine residents the opportunity to elect
a congress member and two senators with full voting rights
for the first time in the nation's history, though the
bill still faces an uphill battle in the U. S. Senate. Currently,
Washington d C has a non voting delegate to the House,
Eleanor Holmes Norton, who introduced the statehood legislation, but has

(00:44):
no say in its passage, as well as to shadow
senators who similarly cannot vote on legislation. The bill would
shrink the federal capital to a small area encompassing the
White House, capital buildings, Supreme Court, and other federal buildings
along the National Mall. The rest of the city would
become the fifty first state. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said

(01:05):
in a news conference. For more than two centuries, the
residents of Washington d C, the District of Columbia, have
been denied their right to fully participate in their democracy.
Pelosi said that the importance of giving Washington d C.
Full voting rights was demonstrated earlier this month when the
administration of President Donald Trump deployed federal law enforcement agents

(01:26):
and National Guard troops against protesters in Washington, d C.
Without the resident's approval. House Majority Leader Sunny Hoyer said,
this is not just an issue of local governance and fairness,
it's a major civil rights issue as well. At this point,
the legislation is a largely symbolic statement that few expect
to pass, at least for now, because it would have

(01:47):
to get through the Republican controlled U. S. Senate, where
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated in an interview with Fox
News that he would deny it a vote even if
the Senate did approve it. Trump most likely would veto
the measure. Trump said to The New York Post in May,
Why so we can have two more Democrats senators and
five more Congressmen. No, thank you, That will never happen.

(02:11):
But the current controversy raises another question. Why didn't the
nation's founders make Washington d C. A state in the
first place, But when they decided to create a new
national capital, why did they choose to deny residents the
same representation in the national government that the rest of
the nation citizens have. As historians explain, Washington's lack of

(02:31):
full representation has mainly to do with two things. First,
there was a desire on the part of some of
the founders to have a strong federal government that wouldn't
be dependent upon the state it was in for services
and protection. But it also has something to do with
Southern slaveholders desire to have a national capital in their
territory with weak self governance so that slavery wouldn't face

(02:55):
any local political resistance. Even after the Civil War, segregationists
in Congress fought for many years to keep control over
the district's administration and deny any power to the city's
largely black population. On that first count, though, an early
U s military mutiny was a primary event that convinced
the founders to keep Washington, d C. From statehood. Ec Initially,

(03:19):
Philadelphia served as the nation's capital, but the Confederation Congress,
which was the predecessor of the present legislative branch, found
itself in a difficult situation. In June of three, that's
when Pennsylvania militiamen who had been furloughed after the Revolutionary
War decided to march to Philadelphia to protest the government
taking away their jobs and not paying them what they

(03:41):
were owed. When these mutineers arrived in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania
government began negotiating with them, but rumors started to spread
among the nervous national legislators that the soldiers might loot
the government chartered Bank of North America if they didn't
get their money. A committee of delegates led by Alexander
Wilton demanded the Pennsylvania state government put down the rebellion,

(04:03):
but the state government declined, saying that the protesters weren't violent.
In the view of some historians, that actually was just
fine with Hamilton's, who was looking to advocate for a
central government with its own police powers over its domain.
Hamilton's persuaded an Ally, the then President of Congress, to
convene a session on a weekend, even though there weren't

(04:24):
enough members around to reach a quorum, so that it
would create the impression that they were menaced by the protest.
Hamilton's then chastised state leaders for failing to protect the
federal government against the soldiers and thus putting it in
a weak and disgusting position. The handful of legislators then
fled to New Jersey, perhaps specifically to add to the drama.

(04:46):
A few years later, the Constitution's framers specified in Article one,
Section eight, clause seventeen that the national capital should be
located in a district quote not exceeding ten miles square
that would be controlled by the federal government and not
by any date. That meant that members of Congress wouldn't
be dependent upon local or state officials to protect them
from future mobs of aggrieved citizens, and, as future President

(05:10):
James Madison noted in Federalist forty three, by not being
dependent upon a state, Congress would avoid potential for corruption
quote an imputation of awe or influence equally dishonorable to
the government and dissatisfactory to the other members of the Confederacy.
Southerners and Northerners in the new government worked out a

(05:31):
compromise in which the capital would be located in the
South in exchange for Southern Congress members dropping their opposition
to the federal government, paying off Northern States debts from
the Revolutionary War. The location along the Potomac River was
attractive to George Washington because it was less than twenty
miles or about thirty two kilometers from his Mountain Vernon estate,
and because he had a vision of turning the capital

(05:53):
into a prosperous riverport and commercial hub. In eighteen o one,
Congress passed the Organic Act, which took away district residents
right to vote for congressional representatives, and the following year
granted a charter to a portion of the district the
city of Washington, which was allowed to elect a twelve
member city council. The mayor initially was appointed by the U.

(06:14):
S President, though in eighteen twenty the law was changed
to allow a mayoral election as well as for that
second count. Washington, d C. Was situated between two slave states,
Maryland and Virginia, which helped protect the slavery there from
northern influence. But we spoke via email with J. D. Dickey,

(06:34):
the author of the book Empire of Mud, the Secret
History of Washington, d C. He said that district became
a bulwark of Southern legislative power and slave trading and
human bondage became legion there, and so, with the population
in the district largely made up of enslaved people and
disenfranchised citizens, the only people who could vote federally or

(06:56):
hold federal power of any kind were congressmen elected by
voters who didn't live there. In the first half of
the eighteen hundreds, Washington became a center for the domestic trade,
home to one of the busiest markets involved in the
sale of human beings. It was a sort of place
where free black man such as Solomon Northrope, whose memoir

(07:16):
was adapted into the film Twelve Years as Slave, ran
the danger of being kidnapped and thrown into the slave
pen that was located at what's now the Federal Aviation
Administration's headquarters at eight hundred Independence Avenue Southwest. But we
also spoke via email with Chris Myers Ash, who's the
co author, along with George Derrek Musgrove, of the book

(07:37):
Chocolate City, A History of Race and Democracy in the
Nation's Capital. Ash explained it developed as a southern city,
not a northern one. Slavery was embedded into the fabric
of the city from its inception, and the slave trade
quickly became a major industry. After emancipation and a brief
flowering of interracial democracy, the city lost itself government, and

(07:59):
city leader is embraced Southern style segregation in customs and
social relations. D C was a Southern city until the
late twentieth century. The issues of self government and statehood
in Washington, d C. Are intertwined with race. Ash says
the Washington had limited self rule for much of the
eighteen hundreds. In the eighteen seventies, Congress took that away.

(08:21):
For the next century, Washington was run largely by Southern segregationists,
such as Senator Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippian who had the
unofficial title of Mayor of Washington. He once warned in
a speech that the voting rights were granted in Washington,
blacks quote would soon have control of the city. Eventually,

(08:42):
Washington's residence did achieve some rights granted two other American citizens.
In nineteen sixty one, the twenty third Amendment gave them
the right to vote in presidential elections, and in nineteen
seventy three they regained the right to elect council members
and the mayor. In nineteen seventy eight, Congress passed a
institutional amendment that would have given Washington residents representation in Congress,

(09:04):
but it had a seven year window for ratification, and
by the time that expired in only sixteen states had
approved it. In another effort to pass a bill in
the House to grant statehood to Washington failed by a
vote of two hundred and seventy seven to just one
hundred and fifty three, but statehood advocates didn't give up.

(09:26):
The current legislation, whose two hundred and twenty five co
sponsors include Speaker Pelosi, is on a path to pass
on a party line vote. The new bill gets around
the Constitution's Article one by carving out of space in
the capital for government buildings, which would remain under federal control,
while converting Washington's mayor to the equivalent of a state governor.

(09:47):
The current Washington statehood legislation would create the state of
Washington d C, with the d C standing no longer
for District of Columbia, but rather Douglas Commonwealth. Thus, the
state would draw it's new name from President George Washington
and abolitionist Frederick Douglas, thereby differentiating it from the Washington
state that already exists. In the Pacific Northwest. Today's episode

(10:15):
was written by Patrick Jake Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang.
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