How Ohio Celebrated July 4, 1976

Fifty years ago, our nation decked everything out in red, white and blue and threw a celebration the likes of which haven’t been seen since. As part of its duties that year, the Ohio American Revolution Bicentennial Advisory Committee held a photo contest. Today, a large number of those photos are immortalized in an Ohio History Connection collection that offers a look into how we celebrated 200 years of freedom — 1970s style.

The parade in downtown Dayton began at 2 p.m., as bells across the city and the United States rang out, commemorating the time the Declaration of Independence had been signed 200 years earlier in Philadelphia.

Overhead, four F-100 fighter planes, 18 biplanes and a helicopter trailing red, white and blue smoke crossed the sky. The weather that Sunday, July 4, was warm and breezy, providing excellent conditions for the 150-unit parade happening on the streets below. 

Bicycle parade with decorated bikes in East Palestine (photo by Dena Bozick, courtesy of Ohio History Connection)

An estimated 300,000 people came to downtown Dayton that day — nearly half of the metro area’s population at the time. They lined the parade route nearly 20 deep in areas. Some leaned out windows and lined rooftops. Others tried to gain a vantage point from the parking garage of downtown’s Rike’s department store.  

Dayton Daily News staff writer Maida Odom captured the scene for the July 5, 1976, edition of the newspaper. During her reporting, she encountered Mayor James McGee at the reviewing stand.

“I think the city can be justifiably proud,” he told her. “I can’t remember when I’ve seen this many people downtown for something like this.” 

That day, Newman Townsend Jr. took a photograph of a man dressed as Uncle Sam walking on stilts and waving a flag. Three men clad in colonial garb follow as spectators line the route. The image is just one of many that today serve as a window into how we celebrated. 

Kids with umbrella in Yellow Springs field (photo by Donna Silvert, courtesy of Ohio History Connection)

In August 1976, a month after the bicentennial celebration, the Ohio American Revolution Bicentennial Advisory Committee announced a Spirit of Ohio Bicentennial Photo Contest to document “the spirit and character of the people and places which represent Ohio during [the] bicentennial year.”

 The contest received 500 submissions of which 140 are today documented in an Ohio History Connection online collection. Submissions ranged from a portrait of Bingo (a Cincinnati-based canine dressed in a patriotic hat, scarf and gloves) to a slice-of-life moment of a young girl and a boy from Yellow Springs sharing an umbrella. (He’s wearing a shirt that says, “Your Country Needs Love Too!”) 

Bicentennial Wagon Train outside of Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati (photo by Madeline Hill)

Another shows the Bicentennial Wagon Train — an only-in-the-1970s idea in which Americans traveled in Conestoga wagons from routes across the country to converge on Valley Forge by July 4 — lined up outside Riverfront Stadium as the procession reached Cincinnati in late May. 

Although photos were only required to have been captured within the bicentennial year, many of the submissions were tied to the weekend that included July 4, 1976, which fell on a Sunday.

Left: Scott Shaffer and Kathy Orr at Mount Pleasant United Presbyterian Church in Kingston, right: harpist at concert at McKinley National Memorial in Canton (photos by Marcus T. Orr, R.C. Bixler, both courtesy of Ohio History Connection)

The 2 p.m. bell ringing that marked the start of Dayton’s July 4 parade was carried out across Ohio and the nation. A photograph by Marcus T. Orr of Columbus shows 13-year-old Scott Shaffer and 14-year-old Kathy Orr preparing to ring the bell at Mount Pleasant United Presbyterian Church, which was built in the Ross County village of Kingston in 1798.

 “Proud old bells in Ohio’s rural towns and farms joined others across the nation when the Liberty Bell was rung at 2 p.m., July 4, 1976, in observance of the Bicentennial,” the photographer noted in a caption. 

Another image shows a harpist in the foreground with the McKinley National Memorial rising in the background and people filling the steps all the way up to where the structure’s dome rises behind them. Photographer R.C. Bixler captured the moment during the Friday, July 2 concert by the Canton Symphony and Civic  Opera Chorus.

Left: young girl with flag, right: Bingo the dog (photos by Greg Patton, Elsa M. Schnieders, both courtesy of Ohio History Connection)

The winners of the contest weren’t what one would expect for a year bursting with red, white and blue. The professional category winner was John G. Kenney of Elyria for his black-and-white image of children playing with a parachute. 

The amateur top prize went to Roger Graham of Barberton. His artistically framed black-and-white photo of a mural of the Statue of Liberty on a wall next to scaffolding gives the composition just the right amount of under-construction energy. 

The nation was, after all, dealing with the aftermath of Vietnam, an energy crisis, the Nixon resignation and a recession, but you wouldn’t know it from the photographs. 

Trumbull County barn with “Happy Birthday, America” written on roof (photo by Patti Zydyk, courtesy of Ohio History Connection)

We painted things red, white and blue — from covered bridges to steel bridges to fire hydrants. Kids proudly waved flags and decorated their bicycles.

They are all flashes now, out-of-context images that show glimpses of who we were. They do offer clues, though. Sifting through the photos that are often blurry and soft from time — like memories — one thing is clear: We were proud to be Americans.  

For more information, visit ohiomemory.org.