For the record, the City of Washington and the District of Columbia were not originally identical - Washington used to only cover a small part of the District - but they've been geographically coterminous and had a single government since home rule was passed in 1973
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Kind of reminds me of how the City of London exists as a separate entity to London. Just one of those odd quirks that happen when boundaries are set without any real thought to possible future growth.
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Yeah if you want to get technical about it, the District Home Rule Act of 1973 abolishes all former political structures within DC and creates a new one, which the law only ever names as "the District of Columbia"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @TrueMetis and
So, technically speaking, the City of Washington no longer exists and all there is is DC But, of course, "Washington, DC" is such an ingrained traditional place name that the US postal designation of the District as such has never changed
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Replying to @arthur_affect @TrueMetis and
One fun proposal I've heard is to officially say "DC" now stands for "Douglass Commonwealth" and to say that "Washington" is now a city named for Walter Washington, the first DC home rule mayor (both namesakes being famous Black men)
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Douglas Commonwealth is the official name for the state the DC will become as laid out in H.R. 51.
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Douglass with two Ses, right? After Frederick Douglass?
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Curse 2 a.m. brain! Yes, named that favorite son of DC!
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Yeah, here's hoping it passes
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Replying to @arthur_affect @jamari_oneal and
(Fun fact: Frederick Douglass took the advice of a white friend when picking a new surname after escaping from slavery, and his friend picked "Douglass" from one of the warring clans in Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake)
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(He did not know until years later that his friend was, in fact, spelling it wrong, and the characters in the book had the more common spelling "Douglas" But by this time he was already published under the name "Douglass" and it seemed too late to change it)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @jamari_oneal and
(Moral of the story: Be careful when making major life decisions based on advice from white friends)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @jamari_oneal and
The Lady of the Lake is a fascinating book just for how wildly popular it was with Americans during a certain time period It inspired Frederick Douglass' last name, the "presidential hymn" of "Hail to the Chief", and the Ku Klux Klan's practice of burning crosses
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