July 4, 1976: US celebrates bicentennial

In July 1976, the United States celebrated its 200th birthday, Jimmy Carter was named the Democratic nominee for President, Hank Aaron hit his 755th and final home run and Edwin Moses took gold in the 400-meter hurdles at the Montreal Olympics. Across the world, Israeli commandos staged a daring raid on Entebbe Airport to rescue more than 100 hostages. 

40 years ago, red, white and blue was everywhere as Americans observed the nation’s 200th birthday.

It was an optimum time for a celebration. The country was a year past the official end of the Vietnam War and the final airlifting of Americans and South Vietnamese from Saigon as the North Vietnamese moved into the city they would rename Ho Chi Minh City.

Two years before, Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace and Vice President Gerald Ford had stepped in with the goal of restoring public trust and optimism.

With some degree of relief, the collective spirit of the bicentennial showed itself in happier events: parades and picnics, fabulous fireworks displays and the flotilla of tall ships that graced New York City’s harbor.

Central Massachusetts was no different, with parades and fireworks throughout the area.

On the morning of July 4, the Telegram used much of the front page to describe what readers would find inside: a comprehensive list of local activities, an 80-page staff-written bicentennial magazine reviewing 200 years of Central Massachusetts history, articles about Revolutionary printer Isaiah Thomas as well as bicentennial souvenirs, and a 677-clue bicentennial crossword puzzle, among many other features.

That eclectic assortment was reflective of the bicentennial in general.

There were a few big gestures. Two American Freedom Trains chugged from one coast to the other, their cars virtual rolling museums of historical artifacts.

According to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, 20 wagon trains comprising 200 wagons journeyed from all over the country for months, gathering on July 3 in Valley Forge.

On CBS, the Bicentennial Minute ran every night for two years, featuring different celebrities reciting a brief history of whatever had happened on that day 200 years ago.

But there was no official national celebration in a single location; rather, thousands of events were held at the state, city and local levels.

In his article, “The Bicentennial Landscape: A Mirror Held Up to the Past,” published in Geographical Review in July 1977, David Lowenthal describes the bicentennial as “a protracted exercise in nostalgia.”

Dissatisfied with the present and pessimistic about the future, Americans in the mid-1970s sought to glorify the past.

Much of that glorification was done in a way that dispensed with historical accuracy, a process that Lowenthal calls the “Disneyfication of the Revolution.”

The bicentennial wasn’t so much a celebration of the America that was, but the America described in “a set of exemplary fables.”

Instead of addressing the realities of historical - and contemporary - diversity and conflict, Lowenthal says, 1976 reinvented the late 18th century as a time when Americans lived “frugal but joyous lives filled with jolly pastimes."

No matter the intent, bicentennial fervor swept the country, with historical re-enactments everywhere, fire hydrants repainted to look like Revolutionary soldiers, and the production of so much historical kitsch that the anniversary was sometimes cynically described as the “buy-centennial.”

Even the rock band Kiss got in on the action, coming up with a bicentennial-themed poster for its U.S. tour.

But on July 4 itself, it was a daring rescue halfway across the world that seized the headlines in the Worcester Telegram as well as everywhere else in the world.

Early that morning, a group of commandos from the Israel Defense Forces had landed on an airfield in Uganda. When they departed less than an hour later, it was with the hostages from a Air France jet traveling from Tel Aviv to Paris that had been hijacked by pro-Palestinians.

This July 4, in 2016, marks the 40th anniversary of the raid at Entebbe.

Correction to last Sunday's story: During World War I, there were 37 million casualties, with 17 million dead, before the conflict ended in November 1918. Last week's story listed 37 million people were dead.

Laura Porter is a Worcester freelance writer and frequent contributor to the Telegram & Gazette. She holds a doctorate in American history from Princeton University. Look for another historical story in next Sunday's Telegram.