The Spirit of 1976: Commerce, Community, and the Politics of Commemoration

3. Anti-Schlock: Consumerism and History on the Red, White, and Blue Left

69 ChaPteR thRee Anti-Schlock Consumerism and History on the Red, White, and Blue Left Protest was an important feature of the national birthday, and objections to the anniversary’s commercialization came loudly and clearly from the left. activists commented broadly but to varying degrees on the bicentennial and bicentennial commercialism, discussing the relevance of the american Revolution and american history to contemporary issues and struggles. they used it as an opportunity to focus attention on their particular concerns. While some spoke more explicitly on bicentennial commerce than others, together their attention to the bicentennial reflected willingness to work with traditional institutions like churches and governmental organizations and a willingness to adopt some of the media relations techniques developed in the marketing industry. the legacy of the revolution, they argued, was the right to shape society and government to the needs of the people. their spirit of ’76 was to support individuals and communities working in groups against the power of big business and its allies in government. like many entrepreneurs and government officials in 1976, activists played a key role popularizing history. their work directly and overtly politicized this mass investment in historical interpretation. the bicentennial came at a moment when activists on the left had become more attuned to the potential of historical knowledge to motivate people to enact or accept the social, economic, or political changes they were advocating. By the mid seventies, activists had also had time to reflect 70 Chap ter Three on the heady, direct-action days of african american civil rights and the other civil rights movements they inspired, such as second-wave feminism , the gay rights movement, the american indian movement, and the black and brown power movements. the urban riots of the late 1960s and early 1970s showed that much of the promise of changes enacted by the earlier civil rights movement had not been fulfilled, and activists were looking for new directions and new ways to create sociocultural as well as legal justice. Civil rights activists had learned about the power of history to create empathy during the Civil War centennial of 1961–1965, and they made efforts to wrest control of the centennial from state and federal authorities who were determined to emphasize the theme of national unity in the name of fighting the cold war. southern state commissions, segregationists, and neo-confederates made ample use of heritage, tying their support for the southern status quo to lost Cause ideology. southern state commissions even refused to use the term “Civil War” because it denied their claim to independent nation status for the Confederacy (they more commonly used “Confederate War”).1 Particularly in the public debate over new Jersey commissioner Madaline Williams being denied accommodations in south Carolina, southern state commissioners and politicians likened the term “Civil War” to what they saw as their suffering during Reconstruction, with the north trying to impose its culture on the south; senator strom thurmond said of the incident that new Jersey was trying to “put the south back into a Reconstruction straitjacket.”2 segregationists and neo-confederates found the first two years of the Civil War an ideal time to glorify the valor of southern troops in the name of states’ rights (for them, the second half of the commemoration, which included fewer southern victories, was not nearly as usable). the southern journalist Ralph McGill found this spectacle unentertaining at best: “What we have now are increasing numbers of persons wandering about the south wearing sleazy imitations of Confederate uniforms, growing beards, stirring up old hatreds, making ancient wounds bleed again, reviving the Ku Klux Klan, working themselves into immature fits of emotionalism , recreating old battles, and otherwise doing a great disservice to the memory of those who fought and died in the war of 1861–1865.”3 Where McGill saw a public dishonor of the dead, civil rights activists saw 71 Anti-Schlock segregationists mobilizing around a shared past, and they responded with protest and historical interpretation of their own, emphasizing the promises of the emancipation Proclamation and the agency of african americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction. the naaCP encouraged its members to avoid participation in federal and state-sponsored events unless government organizers recognized that the Civil War was fought over slavery and that african americans had significant roles in its outcome.4 african americans responded positively to new historical scholarship and writings in popular history that...