NBC, Washington - The D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles introduced two new specialty vehicle tags for District residents commemorating the D.C. statehood movement and Pride month.
The “We Demand Statehood” tag incorporates multiple iconic D.C. symbols into its latest design, such as cherry blossoms and the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. The tag supports the long-standing plight of District residents’ right to equal voting representation in the federal government.
The new tags come after D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen reintroduced a bill earlier this month that would make D.C. the 51st state. The bill would admit the District as the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, retaining "D.C." while honoring the abolitionist, according to the D.C. statehood page.
The new Pride plate comes as 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Pride celebrations in D.C., with WorldPride 2025 slated to take place in the District from May 17 to June 8. The tag features the emblematic LGBTQIA+ rainbow as a ribbon, accompanied by the declaration “Pride Lives Here.”
DC History Center - Captive Capital: Colonial Life in Modern Washington, by Sam Smith (ndiana University Press, 1974)
Journalist Sam Smith’s now classic history of the city’s political
struggles is also a book-length call for statehood. Smith records that a
DC Statehood Committee was founded by Black activists in 1969 as the
first modern group to call for statehood. He notes that the group then
went quiet, and the issue re-emerged as the basis of the new Statehood
Party, formed to back Julius Hobson’s 1971 campaign for DC delegate to
the House of Representatives. (Hobson lost to Walter Fauntroy.) Smith
was part of a small group of activists who developed the statehood
manifesto and the political party that continues today.
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