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Protests during America’s 200th birthday mirror our divisions in 2026
UPenn’s Van Pelt Library presents Celebrate or Demonstrate: Philadelphia and Bicentennial Discontent
As the 2026 news cycle churns, it’s sometimes hard to remember the United States is celebrating 250 years of unity. But a new exhibition at Penn’s Van Pelt Library reminds us that America’s 200th birthday in 1976 was not a time of complete unity, either. Celebrate or Demonstrate: Philadelphia and Bicentennial Discontent is centered on a series of coordinated protests in Philadelphia on July 4, 1976. It’s a small exhibit: two glass cases, just past the Circulation Desk, opposite the elevators. Given that the subject is small, subversive movements during the summer of ’76, the almost-secret display feels appropriate.
Much of the material illuminates a coordinated protest planned by the July 4th Coalition. In the days before digital networks, the principal connections for organizing were made by churches, college students, weekly papers, and civil rights and political groups. They spread the word much the way the original colonists did: the exhibit is a collection of posters, flyers, pamphlets, and articles from small presses. Front pages of The Gayzette and the Majority Report announce rallies for Gay Rights and Women’s Rights. There’s a mimeograph of the agenda for “A Community Celebration of Struggle and Hope” at the Church for the Advocate. A flyer distributed to Amherst students, prepared on a manual typewriter with cartoons added in the margins, noted “Many people have a different story to tell about the last 200 years of U.S. history. Some PICNIC!”
Still celebrating, still marching
In general, there was a lot of enthusiasm for the Bicentennial. The Vietnam War had ended in 1975. President Gerald Ford, famous at the time for not being President Richard Nixon, was about to lose the November election to Jimmy Carter, famous at the time for not being Gerald Ford. Some things are uncomfortably relevant: statehood for Puerto Rico; equal rights; refugees settling in Minnesota; an anti-USA protest in Denmark. (Not in the exhibit, but still culturally significant: The Muppet Show premiered.) The descriptive placards suggest there is much more of this material in the archive curators could have displayed.
The people who attended these rallies are now parents and grandparents, and they’re attending No Kings marches today. They know the new protest songs and can dadsplain the old ones. Students don’t have as much free time on their hands, but much of the material here reads like new flyers stapled to telephone poles, or pasted on social media. A front-page article in the Daily Pennsylvanian on February 12, 2026 traces a history of Penn campus policy towards protests, with administrations being blindsided in 1968, 1977, 2023. Skilled protesters always figure out new ways to get around the yellow tape.
Worth a visit
It’s a long way from Independence Hall to 34th Street. It takes almost as long to sign in to the Van Pelt Library as it takes to see the Demonstrate exhibit. But if you’re in the area, or if you’re a student already in the building, it’s worth taking the 10 steps from the security desk to the wall.
It gives a hint of what a display in 2051 might look like commemorating 2026. And it’s only February.
What, When, Where
Celebrate or Demonstrate: Philadelphia and Bicentennial Discontent. Through May 15, 2026. Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, 1st floor, University of Pennsylvania, 3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. The display is located next to the Circulation desk on the first floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. Library.UPenn.edu/exhibits/celebrate-or-demonstrate.
Accessibility
The Van Pelt Library is a wheelchair-accessible building, with an elevator from the ground floor on the Blanche P. Levy Park side.
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