The Bicentennial +50

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

The Bicentennial was 50 years ago. Planning for it was contentious. We are now on the cusp of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, our semiquincentennial, if you will. What could possibly go wrong?

With an autocratic administration whose leader has almost casually taken us to war, the forthcoming anniversary is emerging for discussion in the public square, thanks in part to an article in The New Yorker magazine on “How the Bicentennial was won.”

Writer Jill Lepore looks at our 1876 Centennial, dominated by a Philadelphia fair celebrating the country’s mechanical achievements (so many sewing machines!), while papering over its lingering divisions, as Reconstruction reforms were yielding to Jim Crow laws. Since the Declaration of Independence had been signed in the city, celebrating its centennial there seemed to make sense, whatever flaws were hidden at the site in Fairmount Park.

The 150^th anniversary in 1926 was barely celebrated and quickly forgotten. Which brings us to the 1976 Bicentennial, during which accidental president Gerald Ford opened a century-old time capsule. The contents, it turned out, were a big disappointment. Nothing to see here, move on.

Or look back. As it were, I was thrust into the battles over the Bicentennial in 1972. As a former reporter in Philadelphia by then working at The Washington Post, I had a special interest in the subject, as the City of Brotherly Love sought and failed to recapture its 1876 anniversary prize. On May 18, 1972, I published a lengthy editorial page column in The Post entitled “Philadelphia: No Site for 76” with the subhead “Did National Politics Foil the Fair?” A month later, a local police story in Washington suddenly overshadowed the fair fight.

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