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

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments this book began as class prep for the graduate seminar Care and Management of historical Collections. i needed a topic that would allow students to practice their skills in research, acquisition, and collections care, and the 1976 bicentennial seemed to have produced an abundance of material for students to consider. it was also recent enough to allow for some interesting work in oral history. in the fall of 2009 we set about building a collection that would attest to the material history of 1976, and in the course of that project we found a number of questions that demanded further inquiry . in the following semester we created an exhibit titled “(dis)spirit of ’76: Bicentennial Commemorations and the american seventies,” which ran in the unCW Public history Graduate student Gallery from april 2010 to february 2011. i have told successive waves of students in my museum exhibition class that one of the most important functions of an exhibit is to inspire visitors to further inquiry. their bicentennial exhibit had that exact effect on me, and because of this i am profoundly grateful for their work and talents. My sincere thanks go to those in the fall 2009 seminar Care and Management of historical Collections: Christopher Bell, Brittany Bennett, sara Brunkhorst, taryn Cooksey, Casey Crater, Kara deadmon, Colleen Griffiths, erica hague, Meaghan nappo, Katie nowack, and Jennifer scott. My appreciation extends to those in the spring 2010 seminar historical exhibition: Christopher Bell, Brittany Bennett, sara Brunkhorst, Kara deadmon, erica hague, Katie nowack, and Jennifer scott. additionally , three students wrote theses about topics in the ’60s, ’70s and x Acknowledgments ’80s: Colleen Griffiths, Meaghan nappo, and Jennifer scott. these students constituted a focused community of scholars that provided helpful support for research on the bicentennial. undergraduate students in the methods class hst 290: the Practice of history asked new and interesting questions as i developed parts of this book as models for different assignments . i am honored to have a role in training new professionals for our field, and my work on this book would not have been as compelling and rewarding had it not been a part of their growth in and commitment to historical inquiry. i am lucky to have supportive and insightful colleagues, and i am especially grateful for the intellectual fellowship of lisa Pollard, Paul townend, Ken shefsiek, sue McCaffray, lynn Mollenauer, ned irvine, and Candice Bredbenner. our conversations on the functions of historical thought in our society have been game-changers. i am also grateful for the insights and friendship of colleagues Will Moore of Boston university, Bradford Wood at eastern Kentucky university, amy hay at the university of texas Pan am, alix Green and sarah lloyd at the university of hertfordshire, Jan davidson and terri hudgins of the Cape fear Museum and earnestine Keaton of the lower Bladen Columbus historical society. i am indebted to the fine organizations that make historical resources accessible to everyone. the bicentennial revealed some of its nuances in collections at the american heritage Center at the university of Wyoming in laramie; the national archives in College Park, Maryland; the yale university library Manuscripts and archives, new haven, Connecticut ; the university of north Carolina Wilmington William Randall library special Collections and the unCW Public history teaching Collections in Wilmington, north Carolina; and the Gerald R. ford Presidential Museum and library in Grand Rapids, Michigan. thank you to the archivists, curators, and collections managers of these institutions and others whose work provides the foundation for the free exchange of historical ideas. sue Cody, history librarian now retired from the unCW Randall library , and Gerald Parnell, special Collections Coordinator, have made heroic efforts to make sure historians at unCW have access to the sources we need. likewise, this book would not have been possible without the work of the professionals in the interlibrary loan office of the William Randall library. xi Acknowledgments i owe a debt of gratitude to everyone at university of Massachusetts Press for the care and scrutiny given to this manuscript. i am particularly grateful for the work of Marla Miller, who provided excellent guidance on the manuscript in its early stages and beyond. she is a brilliant editor and a delight to work with. Clark dougan, senior editor, provided insight throughout the process, and this work is much better because of his attention to it. Katherine scheuer’s copyediting made this book much more readable, and...