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

5. “Just pick something and do it”: Bicentennial Consumerism and Community

109 ChaPteR fiVe “Just Pick Something and Do It” Bicentennial Consumerism and Community While federal planners had starting thinking about the bicentennial about a decade before its arrival, public dialogue about appropriate bicentennial celebration began in earnest around 1974. though much of the press coverage focused on the american Revolution Bicentennial Commission and its more successful progeny, the aRBa, americans also discussed what individuals could or should do for the bicentennial. suggestions ranged from participating in a play, pageant, or parade to (as we have seen) protesting corporate corruption by dumping empty oil barrels into Boston harbor. While business focused on the sellabration, and government struggled to decide between centralization and decentralization , americans embraced a “do your own thing” type of commemoration , an approach repeatedly described as “grassroots.” While some organized specifically against bicentennial merchandising, others, and certainly most by 1976, saw bicentennial shopping as just one of the many ways available to mark the 200th anniversary of the american Revolution. Whatever the approach to commemoration, americans on the whole were by no means apathetic to the anniversary of their country ’s founding. they made varied efforts to make the commemoration meaningful in their own ways and on their own terms. While commentators, activists, and business people focused on the economic effect of bicentennial merchandise, the real economic effect came from the community projects the celebration inspired. each effort to preserve a church, every mural, all exhibits, and every play or pageant 110 Chap ter Five needed materials, and the collective cost of this was estimated to be about $500 million.1 the project’s contemporary commentators remarked that cultural or social projects had real economic effects. economic vitality and community improvement were not mutually exclusive. Moreover, americans’ broad, diverse, and individualized participation in the celebration reflected that, contrary to marketers’ hopes, americans were finding meaning in the commemoration without spending wildly on bicentennial goods. shopping, they showed, was just one way to celebrate in a “do-your-own-thing” commemoration. they also celebrated rather independently of federal planners, eschewing “official” events for those created in their own communities. Participants showed an indifferent response to both government and marketers’ attempts to guide their celebration , indicating a significant change in cultural authority: it now resided in the individual. Publications as diverse as Senior Scholastic, U.S. News and World Report , and Ebony carried stories focused on how to celebrate the occasion or whether to notice it at all. in early 1975, U.S. News and World Report wrote that “tens of thousands of americans are now actively working on festivities—from regional fairs to neighborhood histories. . . . Millions of others are voicing interest in helping, too.” the magazine asked “24 leading americans what an individual can do to help celebrate the Bicentennial ,” and their answers predicted both the diversity of the forthcoming observances and the politico-cultural lean to the right that would follow 1976. national symphony orchestra music director antal dorati told americans to “simply do better than we now do, in our professions, in our personal lives. let’s not yield to temptations of greed, megalomania, violence, vice; let’s excel in our callings, our vocation, our work.”2 aflCio President George Meany urged people to be kinder: “Closing our windows to cries for help and averting our eyes from human need and pain tears apart the foundation of human compassion that undergirds this system.” dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger staubach said americans “ought to raise our children without any awareness of prejudice at all . . . . promote the free-enterprise system . . . keep eternal goals in mind—the love of God” and “get back to fundamentals.” new york Representative shirley Chisholm, hawaiian senator daniel K. inouye, and ford chairman henry ford ii urged americans to vote, while the then- 111 “Just Pick Something and Do It” chairman of Merrill lynch, Pierce, fenner & smith, donald t. Regan, urged citizens to pay attention to the founders through observance and travel to “Philadelphia, Boston, Williamsburg and other areas to learn more about how and where our forefathers lived,” acts which would “rekindle the deep love for america that our forefathers had.” Georgia state senator Julian Bond also wanted americans to pay attention to the founders, but more specifically to the potential of the “lofty principles upon which this country was founded and to try, not just in ’76 but in ’75, ’76 and all the years to follow to make them come true,” for the...