LGBTQ+ people were involved in multiple aspects of Philadelphia’s commemoration of the bicentennial, but the general public did not necessarily know their gender and sexual identities. Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Bill Curry, for instance, reported regularly on the bicentennial; he was known to be gay in the local LGBTQ+ community but not more generally.[1] Composers Leonard Bernstein and Gian Carl Menotti were not generally known to be bisexual or gay when they were commissioned to produce new works for Philadelphia’s celebration of the bicentennial. Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner’s musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue opened at the Forrest Theatre in February 1976; panned in Philadelphia, it flopped when it later opened on Broadway in New York. Menotti’s more favorably reviewed opera, The Hero, premiered at the Academy of Music in June 1976. In September 1976, Philadelphia honored General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian-born Revolutionary War hero, with its annual Steuben Day Parade. Jonathan Ned Katz’s Gay American History, published later that year, claimed him as a gay ancestor.[2]

Martin Duberman

            Historian Martin Duberman, who came out as gay in the New York Times in the early 1970s, writes in his 1996 memoir Midlife Queer about being hired as a scriptwriter for a film that would be used in Philadelphia’s new Living History Museum, which was one of the city’s most prominent bicentennial projects. According to Duberman, the producers wanted “patriotic clichés,” but he instead prepared a script titled “The Independent Spirit,” which focused on Pennsylvania Quakers. Duberman’s work argued that among radical Quakers, “‘liberty of conscience’ had been more consistently stressed than elsewhere in the colonies, God’s ‘Truth’ declared directly, equally, available to all…, the profit motive held subordinate to the public interest, war and violence eschewed as instruments of social policy, the Delaware Indians asked for their ‘love and consent,’ and black slavery denounced and abandoned.” For Duberman, “this egalitarian emphasis was . . . the ideal spirit in which to celebrate the ongoing Revolution—especially since that spirit seemed notably absent from the countless other Bicentennial projects.” The producers apparently disagreed and rejected Duberman’s work.[3] In turn, the general public rejected the Living History Museum, which had disappointing attendance figures and closed in 1978.

“Jay Herman”

            “Jay Herman,” an African American history professor who taught at a liberal arts college in Philadelphia’s suburbs until his AIDS-related death in the late 1990s, served as a consultant to the city’s official bicentennial agency. He also was a founder, curator, and first associate director of Philadelphia’s Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum. When I interviewed him in the 1990s, shortly before his death, he asked that I use a pseudonym to “protect” his family. According to “Herman,” “I was a consultant to the Philadelphia '76 Bicentennial Corporation, which was a kind of umbrella organization planning various activities in connection with the bicentennial. And also I was one of the founders of the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum at 7th and Arch. When we first started talking about something to commemorate Black Americans, particularly Black Philadelphians, the talk was to have some sort of exhibit that would be put up for the bicentennial and then taken down as soon as the bicentennial was over. And there were a number of us who felt that the Black history of Philadelphia was significant enough that we should have something more permanent coming out of the bicentennial. And other people who were involved in the project and who had political connections with Frank Rizzo convinced him that yes, we should have a Black history museum. And that's how we got a Black history museum…. There was a section on [W. E. B.] Dubois. We had some material on Dubois and Paul Robeson and other prominent Black Philadelphians. And using Dubois's Philadelphia Negro, we had maps showing where Blacks had lived in Philadelphia, and many people were amazed that Blacks were very prominent in the area that is now Society Hill around 2nd and Pine, 2nd and Lombard…. The museum, as it turned out to be, opened where it still is now, on 7th and Arch…. We talked him [Rizzo] out of the exhibit idea and then talked him into doing something more permanent…. The museum opened in June of '76.” Asked about his role as a consultant for the Philadelphia ’76 Bicentennial Corporation, “Herman” explained, “Well to give them information dealing with Black history in general and the Black history of Philadelphia in particular. And then I served very briefly as the first associate director of the museum. And it was brief because I had developed this eye problem. I had a detached retina in the right eye and it proved to be a very difficult case. They had to operate five times at Wills Eye Hospital between June of '76 and March of '77. But because of that, I disconnected myself from the museum and I have not been involved in any official capacity since then.” Asked whether any of his museum colleagues would have known that he was gay, “Herman” replied, “I don't think so….  The big thing I did for the museum was to be on The Today Show with some artifacts from the museum. They were doing a taping in Philadelphia for obvious reasons. And in fact it was while we were doing the taping that I realized that I was having a detached retina. So I had to try to keep my cool during the taping. And as soon as the taping was over, I took the artifacts back to the museum and headed immediately for Wills Eye Hospital.” The museum, now called the African American Museum, describes itself as “the first institution built by a major United States city to house and interpret the life and work of African Americans.”[4]

James Roberts

            In an oral history interview conducted in the 1990s, James Roberts, an African American gay activist, remembered that he was working at the Americana Jubilee exhibit in the Bourse building on Independence Mall. He recalled, “I was working in the Bourse building then. I was working in an exhibit called the Americana Jubilee where they had a lot of different simulated historical artifacts like the boat that Washington used to cross the Delaware. What else did they have? Some of Stephen Girard's furniture. They reconstructed some of his rooms. And we would take tours through the exhibit, which was financed by Mrs. Paul's, the fish stick company.” He continued, “We acted out vignettes…. I was a tour guide, too. And I sang in the welcoming room, too, and sometimes outside on the microphone. It was a bomb. Well the whole Bicentennial was a flop…. I can remember seeing Frank Rizzo and of course he killed the Bicentennial because on the Fourth of July he had snipers on the roofs of all the buildings because there was some threatened protests and of course then tourists stayed away in droves that day.” Asked if he recalled anything specific about the roles he was assigned, Roberts responded: “No, it was bad then. You don't want to remember shit like that.”[5]

Jack Adair

            Other LGBTQ+ locals had more fond memories about participating in the official celebrations. Jack Adair, who had helped launch the Philadelphia gay movement in 1960, told me in the 1990s: “I had been invited to be one of the 200 people to participate in the moving of the Liberty Bell at midnight on New Year's Eve. And that was exciting. I also, as a result of that, was able to open that up to a lot of the gay community at the time. Not only did I bring my family and my lover, but my kids and as many gay people as I could get to go. It was a dress affair, so formal attire was required and some didn't want to wear it. Nonetheless, we met afterwards around two in the morning for a gala celebration at my home. I [could] see Independence Hall from the window [at] 4th and Locust. And I could look right out and see the bell tower of Independence Hall.” The weather, however, was not very cooperative. “The evening was cold. It was pouring rain, torrential rains. And we left the Mint and all of that and went down to Independence Hall to move the bell. So the women's evening gowns soaked up all the rainwater and puddles and it was just a terrible mess. We were just sponges. And then afterwards, after those ceremonies were over, we came back to the house and changed clothes and raided closets to get things to fit everybody so they could get out of their wet clothes.”[6]

Kiyoshi Kuromiya

            Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a local Asian American gay liberationist, also shared bicentennial memories with me during an oral history interview conducted in the 1990s. Kuromiya recalled renting a downtown hotel room with three gay friends on New Year’s Eve, smoking pot, going to Independence Hall to watch the Liberty Bell being moved, and getting “soaked.” He told me: “Basil O'Brien, Bruce Hamilton, Horace Godwin, and myself…had gotten a room at the Warwick Hotel and were having a party and some of the hotel staff smelled marijuana. So we were thrown out of the hotel. We escaped by going down the stairwell and got a much better room at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel. It was pouring rain, but both Basil and I wanted to watch them move the Liberty Bell. So we took off, soaked all the way to the skin. We took off to Independence Hall…. And we went over and we watched them move the Liberty Bell.” Kuromiya also recalled a less festive episode in Philadelphia’s bicentennial experience: “I spent five days at a conference for which I wasn't registered, a SAM conference, Society of American Magicians, at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel. I was there every day except Friday, July 17th, which was the one day when everybody that got Legionnaires’ Disease got Legionnaires’ Disease…. I knew, and no one else did, and it certainly wasn't in the papers, that the American Legion had met in 1926 in the Bellevue Stratford. And the big order of business on that day was to, along with the American Chemical Society, urge the U.S. Senate not to ratify the Geneva accords banning chemical and biological warfare. They won. The United States was one of two countries that didn't ratify that ban on chemical and biological warfare, you see. So maybe it's karma, maybe it's cycles or something, but fifty years later, the American Legion's meeting in that same hotel and is struck with Legionnaires’ Disease.”[7] According to the best available estimates, 182 people contracted Legionnaires’ Disease during the bicentennial outbreak; 29 died.[8]

Laurie Barron

            Philadelphia lesbians also participated in bicentennial celebrations and commemorations. Laurie Barron, a Jewish singer who had been active in Radicalesbians Philadelphia, shared her memories in an oral history conducted in the 1990s: “I was involved in a touring company that was performing in period costume…. We went all over the country…and did all this music which does not have a great deal to recommend it…. During that Bicentennial year we were invited to the governor's mansion for the Fourth of July…. It was the national meeting of governors….  We [Barron and her partner Marcea Rosen] stayed overnight in the governor's mansion…. They put us in this room that had a bed in it…. The width of the bed was like less than two feet…. It was very high…. There were two single beds in this room. So of course we get into one bed and we had to spoon very tightly. But we were scared to death about falling out of bed because we could've gotten killed.  It was so high that the drop to the floor was precipitous…. We had fallen out of bed a year before and said we'd better not fall out of bed this year or we'll get concussions.” She also remembered, “I sang in the Candlelight Concerts as part of the Bicentennial celebration…. And was in drag a lot. Colonial drag.”[9]

Becky Davidson

            Becky Davidson, another lesbian I interviewed in the 1990s, remembered that the question of whether to attend the main bicentennial celebrations exposed a political rift with her girlfriend: “That was one of the differences between Ceil [my girlfriend] and me. I was very, very counterculture oriented. I had always gone to marches on Washington against the war in Vietnam, for civil rights, for this and that and whatever. She, on the other hand, was very conservative, had been a member of the Marine Corps for a while until she got booted for being a lesbian. But she was still gung-ho about the country and wanted to go to the bicentennial thing. I was like totally aghast, but I went. And I was totally disgusted…. I was there, very much upset with myself for being there. And later, my next lover told me that she had been involved in the protesting and everything. And I was like: ‘Oh my god. I can't believe.’”[10]

Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and Mary Frances Berry

            Mary Frances Berry, an influential African American historian who served on my Ph.D. supervisory committee at the University of Pennsylvania from 1989 to 1994, also contributed to the bicentennial, though she was not yet working in Philadelphia. In December 1973, the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission (ARBC) hosted a conference on women and the bicentennial in Washington, D.C. Berry, who was teaching at the University of Maryland, represented the D.C.-based Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation and thought that conference resolutions calling for greater representation of women on the ARBC staff, the creation of a National Women’s History Center, and the organization of an International Women’s Arts Festival, did not go far enough. According to Berry, these proposals were “almost an insult to the impact women should be having on the bicentennial.”[11]

            Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, an influential women’s historian who was my Ph.D. supervisor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1989 to 1994, played an active role in the Bicentennial Women’s Center, which opened on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in April 1976. One year earlier, Smith-Rosenberg, still married to historian Charles Rosenberg but coming out as a lesbian, had published, in the women’s studies journal Signs, one of the most important works of lesbian history ever written: “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.” The Bicentennial Women’s Center, which the Philadelphia Inquirer described as “the country’s only comprehensive Bicentennial project on women,” hosted arts and crafts, children’s activities, classes, concerts, conferences, discussions, exhibits, films, lectures, plays, readings, walking tours, and workshops. Smith-Rosenberg helped organize one of its main exhibits, which featured historical photographs of women. Many years later, she published a major monograph on the founding of the United States: Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National Identity (2012).[12]

[1] See handwritten notes in the Tommi Avicolli Mecca Collection (Inquirer Controversy folder) at the John C. Wilcox Jr. Archives in Philadelphia.

[2] On Bernstein, Menotti, and von Steuben, see Stein, Bicentennial, 25, 112-13, 159, 162, 215, 293.

[3] Martin Duberman, Midlife Queer: Autobiography of a Decade, 1971–1981 (Scribner, 1996), 114–17; emphasis in original. For the script, see Box 114, Martin Duberman Papers, New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division.

[4] Marc Stein interview with “Jay Herman,” 16 May 1996, https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/philadelphia-lgbt-interviews/int/jay-herman. OutHistory link. On the museum, see its website at http://www.aampmuseum.org/ and Stein, Bicentennial, 113-14, 131-34, 160, 166, 167, 212-13, 217, 268, 283, 302-3, 312. 

[5] Marc Stein interview with James Roberts, 18 Aug. 1993, https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/philadelphia-lgbt-interviews/int/ja. On the Americana Jubilee, see Stein, Bicentennial, 210.

[6] Marc Stein interview with Jack Adair, 21 April 1993, https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/philadelphia-lgbt-interviews/int/jack-adair. Adair shared with me a July Fourth story as well, but I have found no corroborating evidence for what he described: “The major parade then took place for the Bicentennial and that was July Fourth. And that's where the protest took place and a lot of it took place alongside of Independence Hall…. I was there. We were there in attendance with whistles and noisemakers. And basically just being out, letting people see…. It was the celebration of the country and we had initially wanted to have a contingent in the parade but that had been denied. We did not know whether we would be allowed into the parade right up to, I think, two days before. And they didn't know really where to put the group and what it would look like and what message this would be sending to the country. And largely the protest that came along afterwards on the side street was about our not being able to have a prominent place in that celebration.” On the move of the Liberty Bell, see Stein, Bicentennial, 197-200.

[7] Marc Stein interview with Kyoshi Kuromiya, 17 June 1997, https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/philadelphia-lgbt-interviews/int/kiyoshi-kuromiya.

[8] See Stein, Bicentennial, 4, 287-89, 298, 303.

[9] Marc Stein interview with Laurie Barron and Marcea Rosen, 27 Nov. 1995, https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/philadelphia-lgbt-interviews/int/barron-rosen.

[10] Marc Stein interview with Becky Davidson, 15 Sept. 1995, https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/philadelphia-lgbt-interviews/int/davids.

[11] Mary Frances Berry, quoted in Eugene L. Meyer, “Women’s Groups Demand Half of Top Bicentennial Jobs,” Washington Post, 9 Dec. 1973. See also Stein, Bicentennial, 79-80.

[12] Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1975): 1-29. On the Bicentennial Women’s Center, see Stein, Bicentennial, 78-79, 94, 167-68, 207-8, 284, 291, 294.