Noel King

So this is the bicentennial that we got, that you had all of this grassroots energy of people really advocating for and planning their own commemorative activity that was more reflective of their experience.

And what they ended up doing is...

creating this new American Revolutionary Bicentennial Administration whose sole purpose was to disperse funding through the states to like really hyper local groups and even individuals who were planning bicentennial events and then to publicize those events.

So the actual experience that most people had of the Bicentennial were kind of really sort of local, community-based, grassroots, a very 70s take on commemoration.

This is very wholesome, what you've just described.

But it started out as a similar kind of politicized fury as what we're seeing now.

Absolutely.

You and I are speaking on June 8th.

We got less than a month.

Do you think there is any chance that this heavily politicized celebration that President Trump has planned could morph into something perhaps a bit more hands across the water?

I think that in some ways it already is.

As a public historian, as a fairly community engaged person, I live in a world of kind of structures created for me by the Bicentennial, you know?

So one thing that happened when the Bicentennial switched to kind of funding these small local projects is that a lot of small local projects and organizations

were funded, and that capacity is still there.

Your local museum probably got a new exhibit.

Your library probably videotaped a bunch of people talking about what the commemoration means to them.

the ethos is still there.

And when I look at the kind of stuff that's happening here in Washington, D.C., for example, and, you know, in other cities where people that I work with in the public history community are involved, I see a lot of, you know, really kind of great local projects.

So here in D.C., the public library is doing an exhibit about

Washingtonians' contributions to America.