The decades-long, on-again, off-again struggle for District of Columbia statehood, a rich subject for historians and other scholars, is officially on again with the Democratic “trifecta” – victory in the presidency, House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.
On Jan. 6, Washington’s Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a statement “on the path forward for making DC the 51st state in the 117th Congress,” declaring the battle renewed with the election of President Joe Biden and Democratic control of both houses of Congress, albeit with slender margins.
“Washingtonians have waited over 200 years for the representation we deserve as American citizens. . . But now we are ready to finally fix this injustice by getting statehood on President Biden’s desk within the first 100 days of the 117th Congress,” Bowser vowed, adding that the 712,000 residents of the District would soon “have full access to our nation’s democracy.”
But achieving D.C. statehood may require more than just a Democratic controlled Congress and White House. Those who have studied the issue say it is layered in complexity.
Dr. George Derek Musgrove, a D.C. resident and an associate professor of history at the Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County, cautiously predicts that statehood may become a reality, in part because of the 2020 election results, but also because D.C. has changed significantly over the last three decades. According to 2019 U.S. Census estimates, the city is 45% African American and 43% White.
“The city is less of a sitting duck today than it was in 1993,” Musgrove said, referring to the failed 1993 statehood campaign. Co-author of the book Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital and the subsequent article “Statehood is Far More Difficult: The Struggle for D.C. Self-Determination, 1980–2017,” Musgrove described the 1993 statehood campaign as a presumed failure even before it reached a vote in the House, where it suffered what Musgrove called “a crushing defeat” with 105 Democrats joining the Republicans in voting against it.
He says the outlook is better today.
