District of Columbia historical timeline

Origins

The Residence Act of 1790 settled a deadlock: the federal government would assume the states' war debts, and in exchange the permanent capital would sit in the south, on the Potomac. The site was surveyed as a ten-mile diamond from land ceded by Maryland and Virginia.

Turning points

British forces burned the Capitol and the President's House in 1814. The Virginia portion was returned in 1847. Congress abolished slavery in the District in 1862, nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation, and compensated the owners rather than the enslaved.

Influential people

Pierre L'Enfant designed the plan and was dismissed within a year. Benjamin Banneker, a free Black astronomer, worked on the boundary survey. Frederick Douglass spent his last years in the District and was among its most prominent residents.

Cultural evolution

The District was a majority-Black city from the 1950s until the 2010s, and produced a distinct culture — Howard University, go-go music, the U Street corridor — largely separate from the federal one. The 1968 riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr scarred neighbourhoods that took decades to recover.

Present-day significance

Residents got a presidential vote in 1961 and an elected mayor and council in 1973, though Congress still reviews District legislation and controls its budget. Statehood has passed the House and never the Senate.