The Bicentennial Made American History Look Ridiculous

In the midst of the Watergate scandal in 1973, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Rose DeWolf had argued that the 1976 national elections would be the most important bicentennial event. At the time, Gerald Ford was the House Minority Leader and Jimmy Carter the governor of Georgia; now [in 1976] they were the two main presidential candidates. All major candidates and many political journalists referenced the bicentennial during the campaign. In January, Inquirer columnist Charles Bartlett contended that inflation in 1976 was “like the British oppressions of 200 years ago” in that it was “taxation without representation.” After expressing his hope for a leader who would “battle inflation as relentlessly and resourcefully as George Washington fought the British,” Bartlett predicted that “the redcoats of inflation should be no match in the long run for the wiles of a tenacious leader.” In July, R.W. Apple Jr. wrote in the New York Times that “it would be hard to imagine a greater political windfall for a beleaguered President than the exuberant celebration of the American Bicentennial.” The bicentennial, he claimed, was giving Ford “a priceless opportunity to play the role of national leader rather than that of a candidate scrambling to avoid repudiation.”

A few days later, former Vice President Hubert Humphrey used the bicentennial against Ford. “In 1776,” he declared, “the American people proclaimed their independence and threw out the British Tories. In 1976, the American people will once again affirm our independence and vote out the Republican Tories!” When Carter defeated Ford in November, the two largest states he won and the two largest that flipped from Republican in 1972 to Democratic in 1976 were New York and Pennsylvania. These were home to the two largest urban centers that Ford had most greatly disappointed in the lead-up to the birthday celebration: the Big Apple and the Bicentennial City. There were many reasons that Carter defeated Ford, but one that has not received much attention was Ford’s mishandling of the bicentennial, the Bicentennial City, and the Bicentennial City’s mayor; another was Carter’s successful presentation of himself, in the aftermath of Watergate and in the context of the bicentennial, as an honest and moral leader who would honor the nation’s founding principles, in contrast to the Republican president elected in 1968 and 1972.

Before and after Ford’s defeat, political dissenters challenged official bicentennial commemorations in ways big and small. The Peoples Bicentennial Commission was in the forefront of complaints about commercialization, but others had similar concerns. In November, historian Jesse Lemisch reported in the New Republic that his students in a class on the American Revolution and its commemoration had responded enthusiastically to an assignment that asked them to find examples of free or cheap “Bicentennial Schlock.” Lemisch’s conclusion was that “Bicentennial Schlock” was “the Watergate of patriotism: a healthy demystification which makes us wisely cynical and distrustful of many things that we should have been distrustful of before.” He continued, “The Bicentennial made American history look ridiculous, and there is certainly much in our history which deserves reconsideration.” At the same time, Lemisch argued that “there is much in the American past that we have reason to want to commemorate and celebrate.” Lemisch believed that “many of us who are ambivalent about the American heritage” were “prepared to be moved by the Bicentennial,” but the schlock his students collected “kills genuine sentiment.” His conclusion was that “since Schlock was the Bicentennial’s most pervasive manifestation and perhaps its most enduring heritage, it almost seems, emotionally speaking, as if there were no Bicentennial at all.”

One of the largest counter-bicentennial protests took place in Washington, where the Peoples Bicentennial Commission anticipated that 250,000 people would participate in its Independence Day Rally for Economic Democracy. “We will be demonstrating for economic justice and for independence from Big Business and Big Government,” Common Sense editor Ted Howard proclaimed. The day’s activities began with an interdenominational religious service at the Jefferson Memorial. The theme, “The Year of Jubilee,” was based on a biblical passage “calling for the redistribution of a nation’s wealth every 50 years for the purpose of the achievement of a just, humane and equitable society.” Activists then marched to a rally at the Capitol, where speakers included Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Barry Commoner, Jane Fonda, Philip Foner, Tom Hayden, Dolores Huerta, Ted Howard, Jesse Jackson, Flo Kennedy, Jonathan Kozol, Jeremy Rifkin, and Benjamin Spock. Many participants signed the commission’s Declaration of Economic Independence and supported its call for a “Second American Revolution.” In the context of government warnings about terrorism, organizers had reduced their crowd-size expectations to 100,000. In the end, 5,000 to 25,000 people participated in the peaceful rally.

After many years of engaging with the bicentennial, African Americans participated in, dissented from, and boycotted the official celebrations. On July Fourth, the Washington Post cited Frederick Douglass’ words at the nation’s 76th birthday celebration: “I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary.” Later in July, Voter Education Project Director and future Rep. John Lewis wrote that while the wealthy had reasons to celebrate the bicentennial, “those of us who are poor, who are black or Spanish speaking, or native American, those of us who are the American majority, who are the three-fifths of the population who must subsist with only 10% of the national wealth, need to reexamine our concepts of participation in this nationalistic celebration.” Using coalitional language, Lewis continued, “It is time for blacks and all people who have been victimized by the violent American nightmare of exploitation, militarism, racism, and sexism to recognize our common plight and create our own revolution. We must rise above the distraction of the Bicentennial Celebration and work together to solve the problems which are eating away the very soul of our society.”

Native Americans also participated, dissented, and boycotted. Shortly before Independence Day, a Seneca leader told a New York Times reporter, “Instead of celebrating on July Fourth I’ll be crying, and why shouldn’t I? What did they do except massacre us? They took all our resources, all our lands.” A woman nearby stated, “The white people have taken all our pleasure, all our culture.” Another added, “They even took our language.”

Pacific Islanders joined Native Americans in calling attention to the hypocrisy of celebrating a colonial power’s anticolonial origins. During the week that the United States was celebrating Independence Day, separatists from the Marshall and Palau Islands, administered by the United States within the UN’s Trust Territory of the Pacific, called on the United Nations and the United States to grant them independence. One of their leaders told the UN Trusteeship Council, “At a time when the United States was celebrating the end of colonial rule by Britain, it should not play the role of ‘colonizer’ and compel the 27,000 Marshallese to tie their political future to those of the other islands.” The United States, he insisted, should not retain its “colonial stranglehold” over the islands. The Marshall Islands and Palau later achieved independence and signed “free association” compacts with the United States.

Independence advocates for another U.S. colony did not achieve their goals during 1976 but received a valuable expression of support on July 1, when California Rep. Ron Dellums introduced a Puerto Rican self-determination resolution in the House. Reminding the United States that in 1776 it had “made a commitment to the principles that all colonial people have the inalienable right to self-determination and the right to assume their place as free and independent states,” the resolution declared “that all powers and authorities presently exercised by the three branches of government of the United States … over the territory of Puerto Rico are hereby relinquished and transferred … to the people of Puerto Rico.” Celebrated on the left, the resolution was not passed by Congress.

Many women hoped that the bicentennial might prompt political breakthroughs, especially after the groundbreaking presidential campaigns of Shirley Chisholm and Patsy Mink in 1972. Many feminists, however, were disappointed that the woman who gained the most attention for a presidential run in 1976 was Ellen McCormack, who ran on an antiabortion platform. Dixy Lee Ray was elected governor of Washington, doubling the number of women holding that office; the other was Ella Grasso of Connecticut. Bella Abzug of New York and Patsy Mink of Hawaii lost their Senate campaigns, keeping the number of female senators at 0. As for the House, after the 1976 elections, the number of women dropped from nineteen to eighteen. In a further sign of trouble, no state ratified the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] in the second half of 1976, destroying the momentum that had been building since 1972.

LGBTQ people were not invited to participate as such in the official celebrations, but many crashed the parties. In July, Lesbian Tide, published in Los Angeles, featured a drawing of a sideways U.S. flag, with the stripes representing prison bars, a human figure escaping, and a caption declaring “freedom!” The front cover of the summer issue of Lesbian Voices, published in San Jose, depicted an image of a U.S. flag with the words “Lesbian Nation” (the title of Jill Johnston’s 1973 book) on the stripes. The back cover featured the flag with intersecting female symbols replacing the stars. Inside the issue were the lyrics of “Glory, Lesbian Nation,” designed to be sung to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the day,” the song began, “When all Lesbians are united and we turn the whole world gay / And when we have converted them, converted they shall stay / Our truth is marching on!” The issue also featured a drawing of a finger pointing at the four presidents on Mount Rushmore and a sign that declared “Happy Birthday, America!” The caption explained that “homosexuals received a Bicentennial present from the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 6 to 3 that States may prosecute and imprison consenting adults for homosexual acts.”

LGBTQ people also confronted other forms of bicentennial censorship. In July, the Advocate reported that “the sexual revolution now has its own flag motif: a red, white and blue graphic cock.” The design featured “a starry-blue pair of balls and a red-and-white striped barber pole shaft topped with an enormous red acorn.” Kerry X. LeBre of New York was “the irreverent designer,” and the image was for sale on posters, T-shirts, buttons, cards, flags, and needlepoint kits. In August, however, the Advocate reported that the image was not welcome in Provincetown, a popular gay travel destination in Massachusetts. Categorizing LeBre’s image as pornographic and unpatriotic, the police chief had ordered stores to stop selling it and people on the streets to take off the shirts. The Advocate quipped that under-the-counter sales were now exploding. Subsequent issues featured advertisements for merchandise using the image; one item was marketed as “the T-shirt of the decade” and “banned in Provincetown.” The international LGBTQ press had fun with this new example of American puritanism; a headline in Montreal read, “Un Poster Antipatriotique,” and one in Australia declared, “Gay Patriotism Banned in Provincetown.” The Australian article reported that the design had “more wit and good humor than most Bicentennial items on the market,” describing its “American primitive style” as “charming rather than lewd.” 

As 1976 came to a close, the Washington Post released an editorial, “The Future of History.” At the recent annual convention of the American Historical Association, C. Vann Woodward had reflected on “the great American birthday party.” The nation was “aging,” Woodward argued, and losing its sense of “innocence” and “invincibility.” According to the Post, “much the same could be said about the historical profession.” The “job crisis in academia,” which was especially grave in the liberal arts, had “shattered many historians’ faith in the tangible rewards of scholarship,” and there was also “great controversy about the content of history courses and the very nature of the historians’ craft.” The Postfound it “ironic” that “in the bicentennial year, the professional analysts of the past should be so troubled.” New attention to ethnicity, gender, popular culture, and “other fashionable themes” had demonstrated the discipline’s “vitality,” but “skeptics and pessimists” were worried that “just as the ‘old history’ could be dull and limited, the ‘new history’ could be swamped by triviality, confusion over methods and a self-defeating desire for ‘relevance.’” The Post thought the critics had a point: history courses in elementary and secondary schools and in community colleges were now “more appealing and provocative” but “at considerable cost in terms of students’ understanding of historical context and basic facts and dates.”

On the bright side, the Post argued that the job crisis had “compelled historians to look beyond their ivory towers and seek better relations with the less-learned world outside.” There was a “surge of interest” in “teaching outside the universities, historic preservation, public and corporate records work, museum management, local history, and genealogy.” One university had launched a doctoral program in public history; another was developing a master’s program on archives. More generally, there was new interest in writing for broader audiences and helping to “popularize” the past. “Thus,” the Post concluded, “the professional custodians of the past are becoming less stuffy and self-indulgent, even as the public is growing more sensitive to the real richness and rewards of historical inquiry.”

Many historians undoubtedly disagreed with some of the Post’s claims, especially if they did not work at elite institutions; if they were part of the discipline’s long tradition of writing for the general public; and if they did not appreciate the suggestion that histories of ethnicity, gender, culture, and “other fashionable themes” were “confused” and “trivial.” Those who had heard Woodward’s address also might have noted that the editorial missed his concluding paradox, that the “aging” nation was showing signs of “a refusal to grow up.” But if the bicentennial had encouraged greater public awareness of the “rewards of historical inquiry,” there was indeed something to celebrate as the national birthday concluded.

Reprinted with permission from Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s by Marc Stein, published by The University of Chicago Press. © 2026 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

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Want to keep reading about the 250th? Here is Bruce W. Dearstyne on how Calvin Coolidge celebrated the United States’ 150th anniversary, and Marc Egnal on the historiography of the causes of the American Revolution. Find even more to explore on Bunk.