2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Countdown to America's 250th Birthday
Fifty years ago, the U.S. was anticipating a major national anniversary only 12 months away: the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence. The road to 1976 was rocky. Americans endured a decade of disorienting social change and tumult ranging from political violence to urban riots. They lost thousands of young men in a traumatic and unsuccessful war. A generational economic boom was over. Social optimism had degenerated into suspicion and bitterness. An American president resigned after a coverup failed to conceal what many had long suspected.
The nation had good reason to eye the bicentennial with caution. But Billboard's No. 1 song on July 4, 1975, was Captain & Tennille's 'Love Will Keep Us Together,' and a year later, the country got itself together to stage a memorable celebration. On July 4, 1976, tall ships and other vessels from dozens of nations filled New York Harbor. Arthur Fiedler conducted the Boston Pops in a concert before a record-breaking audience of more than 400,000 on the Charles River Esplanade. In Washington, grand marshal Johnny Cash marched at the head of a massive parade down Constitution Avenue. Los Angeles staged its own great procession on Wilshire Boulevard.
States, cities and towns devised their own spirited tributes, having largely ignored, in true federalist fashion, earlier efforts to nationalize events. St. Louis readied a massive party around its Gateway Arch, including an air show with a wing walker and parachute jumpers. Chicago planned to swear in 1,776 new citizens. Baltimore prepared a 90-foot-long cake in the shape of the U.S. Ontario, Calif., set up a 2-mile-long picnic table. Depending on where you were across the country, there would be hog-calling contests, tractor pulls, pancake breakfasts, dog shows, pony rides, concerts, parades and fireworks—always fireworks.
For 21 months, from April 1, 1975, through the last day of 1976, the 26-car Freedom Train, pulled by a steam locomotive, visited all 48 contiguous states, bearing artifacts of American history. Some Americans, their party affiliations not recorded, sent homemade gifts marking the bicentennial to President Gerald Ford.
