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“Guerrilla Theater … in the Guise of Red, White, and Blue Bunting”: The People's Bicentennial Commission and the Politics of (Un-)Americanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2016

SIMON HALL
SIMON HALL*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Leeds. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article explores the battles over “Americanism” and “un-Americanism” that swirled around the People's Bicentennial Commission (PBC) – a radical, populist organization that sought to promote fundamental economic change during the mid-1970s. Although it was founded by 1960s veterans, the PBC was sharply critical of what it saw as the New Left's abandonment of Americanism. As the nation prepared to celebrate its two-hundredth birthday, the PBC sought to present itself, and its radical programme, as representing the “true” spirit of the American Revolution. For its conservative critics, though, the PBC's patriotism was little more than a ruse, designed to trick ordinary Americans into supporting what was, essentially, a dangerous (and un-American) force.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 114 - 136
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

1 “The Bicentennial of the United States: A Final Report to the People,” Volume IV, 77, 409, 339; “BICENTENNIAL: Oh, What a Lovely Party!”, Time, 19 July 1976.

2 Ibid.; Hess, John L., “A Day of Picnics, Pomp, Pageantry and Protest,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), 5 July 1976, 1, 18Google Scholar; Ferretti, Fred, “Ethnic Diversity Adds Spice to the Holiday,” NYT, 5 July 1976, 1, 22Google Scholar; Prial, Frank J., “The Forrestal's Bell Tolls 13 Times for 13 Colonies’, NYT, 5 July 1976, 16Google Scholar.”

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9 Howard, Ted et al. , The P.B. C.: A History (Washington, DC: The People's Bicentennial Commission, c. 1976), 5, 9Google Scholar. Both Ted Howard, the PBC's codirector, and David Helvarg, its West Coast coordinator, had been heavily involved in antiwar protests. See Tammy Gordon, interview with Ted Howard, 21 Dec. 2011, 1–2, and Gordon, interview with David Helvarg, 28 Dec. 2011, 1, “An Oral History of the 1976 Celebration of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution,” UNCW Public History Teaching Collections: Bicentennial Oral Histories, University of North Carolina–Wilmington. I am grateful to Tammy Gordon for providing me with copies of these interview transcripts.

10 The PBC: A History, 28–29. For a brief overview of the organization's history, and some of its major activities, see Gordon, The Spirit of 1976, 72–82, esp. 75–76.

11 The PBC: A History, 28.

12 Ibid.

13 Tammy S. Gordon, “Interview with Ted Howard,” 3.

14 See Lieber, David, “Jeremy Rifkin's Big Beefs,” Pennsylvania Gazette, Oct. 1992, 27, 28, 29Google Scholar; Thompson, Dick, “The Most Hated Man in Science: JEREMY RIFKIN,” Time, 4 Dec. 1989 Google Scholar; The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial: The People's Bicentennial Commission: Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee of the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-Fourth Congress, Second Session, March 17 and 18, 1976 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1976), 92, 104–6, available at http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,959181,00.html; Tom Mathews with Jane Whitmore, “Up-to-the-Minutemen,” Newsweek, 19 May 1975, 29.

15 Tammy S. Gordon, “Interview with Ted Howard,” 1; Gordon, “Interview with David Helvarg,” 1, 4–5; Helvarg, David, Saved by the Sea: Hope, Heartbreak, and Wonder in the Blue World (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2010), 37–39, 51, 56–57Google Scholar.

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18 PBC grant proposal to the NEH, June 1972, PBC staff (probably Rifkin), in The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial, 102–3.

19 Gordon, interview with Ted Howard, 21 Dec. 2011, 1.

20 Jeremy Rifkin, “Bicentennial,” New American Movement, Nov.–Dec. 1971, reprinted in The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial, 75.

21 The P.B. C.: A History, 10; Lukas, “Who Owns 1776?”. See also Gordon, The Spirit of 1976, 72.

22 Gordon, interview with David Helvarg, 28 Dec. 2011, 1.

23 Rifkin, “Bicentennial,” 76.

24 Ibid., 76, 78, also 77. Rifkin, “The Red, White, and Blue Left,” 136, 139.

25 For a discussion of the “rise and fall,” or “declension” narrative and its place in the historiography of the 1960s see Hall, Simon, “Framing the American 1960s: A Historiographical Review,” European Journal of American Culture, 31, 1 (April 2012), 5–23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Kazin, Michael and McCartin, Joseph A., “Introduction,” in Kazin and McCartin, eds., Americanism: New Perspectives on the History of an Ideal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 6–7 Google Scholar. See also Kazin, Michael, “A Patriotic Left,” Dissent, Fall 2002, 41–44 Google Scholar.

27 Rifkin, “The Red, White, and Blue Left,” 132.

28 Hall, American Patriotism, American Protest, 16–17. The group also staged a protest at Lexington and Concord, arguing that “this present hour in history is again a time when people are trying to secure the liberty and peace upon which the country was founded.” Linenthal, Edward Tabor, Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 40–41 Google Scholar.

29 Hall, Simon, “The American Gay Rights Movement and Patriotic Protest,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 19, 3 (Sept. 2010), 536–62, 544, 551CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 The P.B. C.: A History, 5.

31 “1976: The Year for Revolution,” Common Sense, 4, 1 (1976), 1.

32 Ibid.; The P.B. C.: A History, 7.

33 PBC, Common Sense II (1975), reprinted in The P.B. C.: A History, 20–21; “July 4, 1976: The Revolution Continues,” Common Sense, special issue, 4 July 1976, 5.

34 PBC, Common Sense II, reprinted in The P.B. C.: A History, 22.

35 Ibid., 23.

36 PBC, “The Declaration of Economic Independence,” in The PBC: A History, 76–77.

37 Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes, 84; America's Birthday, 51.

38 Sandbrook, Mad as Hell, 333.

39 The PBC: A History, 76–77.

40 “PBC News and Reviews,” Common Sense, 3, 3 (1975), 4; “PBC News and Reviews,” Common Sense, 4, 1, 6.

41 See Declaration of Economic Independence, 76; Arvin Donley, “The Inside Story of a Groundbreaking Trade Agreement” (2 July 2013), world-grain.com, at www.world-grain.com/News/News%20Home/Features/2013/7/The%20inside%20story%20of%20a%20groundbreaking%20trade%20agreement.aspx?cck=1.

42 Common Sense, 4, 1, 6.

43 Gordon, “Interview with David Helvarg,” 9, 8.

44 The P.B. C.: A History, 9–10.

45 See, for example, “P.B. C. News and Review: Chicago,” Common Sense, 3, 3 (1975), 5 Google Scholar.

46 “P.B. C. News and Review: Philadelphia,” Common Sense, 3, 3 (1975), 4 Google Scholar.

47 “P.B. C. News and Review: San Diego,” Common Sense, 3, 3 (1975), 4 Google Scholar.

48 “Ronald McDonald Hung in Effigy,” Common Sense, 3, 2 (1975), 4 Google Scholar.

49 Common Sense, 4, 1, 7. See also Mathews, Tom with Whitmore, Jane, “Up-to-the-Minutemen,” Newsweek, 19 May 1975, 29 Google Scholar.

50 Ted Howard, “Two, Three Many Boston Tea Parties,” reprinted in The P.B.C.: A History, 37–39; McGhee, Dorothy, “20,000 Rebels Rise Up at Boston Oil Party – Dump King Exxon,” Common Sense, 2, 1 (Jan. 1974), 1Google Scholar.

51 “The Tea & Oil Party, 1973,” in The P.B. C.: A History, 35–36; Howard, “Two, Three Many Boston Tea Parties”; McGhee, Dorothy, “20,000 Rebels Rise up at Boston Oil Party: Dump King, Exxon!”, Common Sense, 2, 1 (Jan. 1974), 1 Google Scholar; Kifner, John, “Impeachment of Nixon Urged at Re-enactment of Boston Tea Party,” NYT, 17 Dec. 1973, 26 Google Scholar; Lepore, “Tea and Sympathy.”

52 Oral History of the 1976 Celebration of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution, Tammy Gordon, “Interview with Ted Howard,” 21 Dec. 2011, 4. Copy in possession of author.

53 The P.B. C.: A History, 51; “45,000 Patriots Gather at PBC Rally for Economic Democracy,” Common Sense, 3, 2, 9; Kifner, John, “160,000 Mark Two 1775 Battles; Concord Protesters Jeer Ford,” NYT, 20 April 1975, 1, 49Google Scholar.

54 The P.B. C.: A History, 51–52; “The Second Midnight Ride to Concord,” Common Sense, 3, 2; “They Spoke and Sang for Economic Democracy,” Common Sense, 3, 2, 12; Mathews with Whitmore; Kopkind, Andrew, “The Spirit of ’76,” New York Review of Books, 15 May 1975, 29–30 Google Scholar; Oral History of the 1976 Celebration of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution, Tammy Gordon, “Interview with David Helvarg,” 28 Dec. 2011, 2. Copy in possession of author.

55 The P.B. C.: A History, 52; “New Patriots Unanimously Adopt Declaration of Independence,” Common Sense, 3, 2, 16.

56 “Thousands Boo Ford Speech; Recapture North Bridge,” Common Sense, 3, 2, 19; The P.B. C.: A History, 52; Kifner, “160,000 Mark Two 1775 Battles”; Alpern, David M. with Buresh, Bernice, Monroe, Sylvester, and Copeland, Jeff B., “Not So Happy Birthday,” Newsweek, 28 April 1975, 32 Google Scholar. For Ford's speech see “Remarks at the Old North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts, 19 April 1975, at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4847, accessed 17 Nov. 2010; Linenthal, Sacred Ground, 41–43.”

57 Kopkind, 29.

58 Congressional Record, 22 Dec. 1973, Congress-Session: 93-1 (1973), Extensions of Remarks, 43442–43.

59 Wiedrich, Bob, “Seeing Only Red for the Bicentennial,” Chicago Tribune, 24 Aug. 1975, 5 Google Scholar. On Weidrich see Erin Meyer, “Robert Wiedrich, 1927–2012,” Chicago Tribune, 15 April 2012, at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-04-15/news/ct-met-obit-wiedrich-20120416_1_city-hall-reporter-watchdog-neighborhood-news-section, accessed 20 Nov. 2015.

60 Quoted in Linenthal, 3.

61 The PBC: A History, 6.

62 Editorial, “Hijacking the Bicentennial,” Chicago Tribune, 20 Dec. 1975, S6 Google Scholar.

63 On the heckling of Reagan see, for example, David M. Alpern with Thomas M. DeFrank in Washington and Gerald C. Lubenow on the Campaign, Reagan, “A Dose of ‘Common Sense’,” Newsweek, 26 Jan. 1976, 17 Google Scholar.

64 Gordon, H. C., “Hijacking the Bicentennial,” Spartanburg Herald Journal (South Carolina), 1 Feb. 1976, 3 Google Scholar.

65 On “closed-door” see The PBC: A History, 61.

66 The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial, 2.

67 Ibid., 3.

68 Ibid., 3–5; see also 6–7.

69 Ibid., 11.

70 Ibid., 37–40, 40–41.

71 Ibid., 41.

72 Quoted in Perlstein, Rick, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014), 606–7Google Scholar.

73 Editorial, “The War Is Over,” Common Sense, 3, 2, 2; Rossen claimed to have “reject[ed] Marxism and Stalinism and Maoism” and “abandoned any ideas that were purely Marxist.” He also criticized the US left for its addiction to Marxist dogma and failing to take into account the “unique realities of American society” in The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial, 87, 90–91.

74 Gordon, “Interview with Ted Howard,” 3.

75 Reinhold, Robert, “Radical Group Presses New Bicentennial View,” NYT, 18 Jan. 1976, 38 Google Scholar.

76 On the history of “un-Americanism” – and the ways in which the term is routinely traded by political opponents – see Lewis, George, “An Un-American Introduction,” Journal of American Studies, 47, 4 (Nov. 2013), 871–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Capozzola, “It Makes You Want to Believe in the Country,” 32, 37; Bodnar, John, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 231 Google Scholar; Lieber, “Jeremy Rifkin's Big Beefs,” 29; Gordon, The Spirit of 1976, 74–75.

78 The PBC: A History, 33–34.

79 On the commercialization of the Bicentennial see, for example, “Marketing: Bucks from the Bicentennial,” Time, 29 Sept. 1975, at http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913493,00.html; Capozzola, 33; Lawrence Van Gelder, “Why 1976 Is Beginning to Look Like $19.76,” NYT, 3 April 1976, 45.

80 Bronson, Gail, “The Spirit of (19)76: Is It a Bicentennial or a Buy-Centennial?”, Wall Street Journal, 15 April 1975, in The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial, 82–84 Google Scholar.

81 Lieber, 29; The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial, 25, 86; Reinhold; Perlstein, 606.

82 Reinhold; “The Government Bicentennial Is Very Shallow,” interview with Rifkin, in U.S. News & World Report, 24 March 1975, in The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial, 84–85. For OAH see Walton testimony in ibid., 63. On proliferation of PBC literature see Walton testimony in ibid., 50.

83 Christopher B. Daly, “The People's Bicentennial Commission: Slouching towards the Economic Revolution’, Harvard Crimson, 28 April 1975, at www.thecrimson.com/article/1975/4/28/the-peoples-bicentennial-commission-pif-you; The PBC: A History, 28.”

84 See Walton testimony in The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial, 56; The PBC: A History, esp. 6–7; Gordon, The Spirit of 1976, 75–76.

85 Bender, Marilyn, “Staff Informers Offered Reward,” NYT, 12 April 1976, F1, 46; Bodnar, 236Google Scholar; “The Bicentennial: In Dubious Battle,” Newsweek, 26 April 1976, 91.

86 “Bicentennial Follies,” NYT, 6 May 1976, 36; Capozzola, 37; Gordon, The Spirit of 1976, 78–79.

87 PBC press releases printed in The Attempt to Steal the Bicentennial, 188, 189.

88 Hess, John L., “A Day of Picnics, Pomp, Pageantry and Protest,” NYT, 5 July 1976, 18 Google Scholar; Capozzola, 39; Lieber, 30.

89 Tammy Gordon, “Interview with David Helvarg,” 4, 6; Tammy Gordon, “Interview with Ted Howard,” 6.

90 On the name change see The PBC: A History, 78. The group's most prominent activists have fared better: Jeremy Rikfin has enjoyed a long and controversial career as a political activist and organizer – campaigning against biotechnology, genetic engineering, GM foods, and the American beef industry; after leaving the PBC, Ted Howard worked as the communications director for the Hunger Project (a California-based nonprofit organization, dedicated to sustainable strategies to end world hunger); while David Helvarg founded (and continues to lead) the marine conservation group Blue Frontier. See Lieber; Thompson, “The Most Hated Man In Science”; Boffey, Phillip M., “Working Profile: Jeremy Rifkin,” New York Times, 11 April 1984, B10Google Scholar. Steven H. Lee, “Picking Food Fights,” Dallas Morning News, 10 May 1994, 1D; www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm; Gordon, The Spirit of 1976, 140; http://thp.org; www.bluefront.org; and Helvarg, Saved by the Sea.

91 Isserman, Maurice and Kazin, Michael, “The Failure and Success of the New Radicalism,” in Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary, eds., The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 212–42, 229Google Scholar. See also Gitlin, Todd, The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1996)Google Scholar. Ted Howard, email correspondence with the author, 21 May 2016.

92 Bodnar, 236–37.

93 Sandbrook, Mad As Hell, xiii, 333.

94 The PBC: A History, 55; Reinhold, “Radical Group Presses New Bicentennial View.”

95 Common Sense, 3, 3 (1975), 8.

96 Gordon, “Interview with David Helvarg,” 9.

97 Hall, American Patriotism, American Protest, chapter 5; Lepore, The Whites Of Their Eyes, 84. See also Lepore, “Tea and Sympathy.”

98 Zaretsky, No Direction Home, 22, 143–81, esp. 149, 171.

99 Ibid., 181. See also Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge. Similarly, Tammy Gordon has argued that “if the Reagan presidency was the country's new morning, the bicentennial was its dawn.” See Gordon, The Spirit of 1976, 134.

100 “To Restore America,” Ronald Reagan's Campaign Address, March 31, 1976, available at https://reaganlibrary.archives.gov/archives/reference/3.31.76.html, accessed 20 May 2016.

101 Gordon, The Spirit of 1976, 132–34.