Teen Stabbed at Zoo’s Easter Monday Celebration
A teenager was stabbed today at the National Zoo, on Easter Monday, a day traditionally celebrated by African American families:
According to this report, the boy was wounded several times. A similar incident occurred on Easter Monday in 2000, when seven young people were shot.
The tradition of celebrating Easter a day late at the zoo originated over a century ago:
The free gathering, which dates back to the 1890s, almost as far as the White House Easter Egg Roll. Oral history says that black domestic workers were required to work on Easter Sunday, so Monday was the day of family celebration. And since the White House in those segregated days either didn’t allow or strongly discouraged African-Americans at its egg roll, the District’s black residents created their own.