I was still 12 in July 1976. There are a few things that still stand out from my 6th grade year. One was the Pong interactive display in the electronic section in the basement of the local Sears store. The other was the BIG deal that was the Bicentennial. I had a kid’s very limited understanding that some of that Bicentennial excitement was an antidote for the struggles of that time: The Hard Hat Riot and Kent State shootings in May 1970, Richard Nixon’s demise in August 1974 and the fall of Saigon in April 1975 that played out on the televisions in the country’s living rooms.
1976 and the Bicentennial feels quaint 50 years later. But I know better; it wasn’t. We were trying to figure out then what freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were supposed to mean, just like we still are in 2026.
My antidote for my frequent doomsday feelings is diving into our history because there’s nothing like hard context to put the present into perspective. I’ve come to learn that we’ve been at each other’s throats since day one. The Revolutionary War was really our first civil war and just as brutal as the second one. We’ve had terrible people in positions of power. We’ve enacted horrible laws and rendered truly awful legal decisions. We’ve done awful things to one another. That’s the history of one part of America. The other history is the one of unsung heroes who committed themselves to doing the right things under often daunting circumstances. Those types of people still walk among us and if history tells us anything, they, too, will eventually prevail.
