{"id":216712,"date":"2026-05-01T15:18:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T15:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/216712\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T15:18:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T15:18:32","slug":"how-a-radical-historian-saved-the-schlock-of-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/216712\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Radical Historian Saved the Schlock of \u201976"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

U.S.A. at 250<\/a><\/p>\n

Yale\u2019s Bicentennial Schlock collection offers a window into the star-spangled commercialism that swept the country 50 years ago. <\/p>\n

The Beinecke Library at Yale is home to countless treasures, including a Gutenberg Bible, an original printing of the Declaration of Independence and hand-drawn maps from the Lewis and Clark expedition.<\/p>\n

But on a recent afternoon, in the basement reading room, Joshua Cochran, the library\u2019s curator of American history, reached into one of a dozen archival boxes loaded on a cart and carefully unwrapped a humbler item \u2014 a paper cup imprinted with the image of Paul Revere\u2019s lantern.<\/p>\n

Also in the boxes were sugar packets with presidential portraits, a Bicentennial burger wrapper and, taped to an index card, a withered \u201call-American novelty condom,\u201d emblazoned with the slogan \u201cOne Time for Old Glory.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there was a rumpled piece of plastic, which on closer inspection turned out to be a \u201cBen Franklin kite\u201d stamped with the words of the Declaration.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory is not just about presidents and kings and diplomats, but a lived daily experience for people,\u201d Cochran said. \u201cLooking at this collection, it really reminds you of the everydayness of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bicentennial Schlock collection, totaling just over 100 artifacts, is one of Yale\u2019s quirkier holdings. Assembled in 1976 by the historian Jesse Lemisch, it endures as a lively (if a bit grungy) testament to the star-spangled commercialism that swept across the country in the run-up to the 200th anniversary of American independence.<\/p>\n

Today, it can be hard to grasp the scale of the swag. By the time the confetti stopped falling, according to one estimate, more than 25,000 items had been produced, from a limited-edition replica of George Washington\u2019s sword to independence-themed toilet paper.<\/p>\n

This being the 1970s, the commercialism prompted a countercultural pushback, along with charges that \u201cBuy-centennial\u201d huckersterism had sold out the true radical spirit of \u201976.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know damn well that we\u2019re going to be inundated for two years with an attempt to sell a plastic image of America to sell cars and cornflakes,\u201d the activist Jeremy Rifkin, a founder of the People\u2019s Bicentennial Commission, an anti-corporate group, told The New York Times in 1974<\/a>. \u201cTo me that\u2019s treason.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lemisch, as a lifelong man of the left, was politically sympathetic. But as both a scholar and a self-described \u201cterminal Bicentennial freak,\u201d he also saw an opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many of us,\u201d he wrote in The New Republic in 1976, \u201care lucky enough to see the central passion of our creative lives translated into the Disney version, and for sale, in this translation, in every supermarket?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lemisch, who died in 2018<\/a>, was not the only one cataloging the goofier manifestations of the Bicentennial. The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich., has a trove of memorabilia, including a can of \u201cBicentennial air.\u201d<\/a> And the University of Central Florida has a \u201cBicentennial Junk\u201d<\/a> collection. But Lemisch\u2019s comes with an intellectual pedigree forged in the history wars of the \u201960s and \u201970s.<\/p>\n

Lemisch, who got his doctorate from Yale in 1963, was part of a generation of social historians who challenged both the conservative bent of scholarship on early America and what they saw as the historical profession\u2019s complacent, complicit relationship with American power<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In his influential 1967 essay \u201cThe American Revolution Seen From the Bottom Up,\u201d he argued that the Revolution wasn\u2019t just a top-down affair but also a genuinely democratic uprising driven by the aspirations of the artisan and working classes, which were ultimately thwarted by wealthy elites.<\/p>\n

He also pushed for democratization of the archival record. In a 1971 essay called \u201cThe American Revolution Bicentennial and the Papers of Great White Men,\u201d<\/a> Lemisch lamented that the ambitious and well-funded scholarly editing projects undertaken for the anniversary neglected rabble-rousers like Thomas Paine and Sam Adams, to say nothing of women, Black Americans and Native Americans.<\/p>\n

Those projects, he argued, reflected the \u201carrogant nationalism and elitism\u201d of the 1950s that historians, like the nation itself, were already leaving behind.<\/p>\n

The schlock collection had its origins in an undergraduate class Lemisch taught at the State University of New York, Buffalo, in the spring of 1976. The course included scholarly reading, but Lemisch also instructed the students to gather as much Bicentennial junk as they could find.<\/p>\n

Jesse Lemisch, shown preparing for the original \u201cBicentennial Schlock\u201d exhibit in October 1976. Israel Shenker\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

\u201cWe owe it to Those Who Will Come After Us to preserve and interpret these priceless relics,\u201d he wrote in his syllabus<\/a>. \u201cLet us fill a time capsule with a deeply embarrassing heritage for 2076.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forget the quality commemorative items from the Franklin Mint and Colonial Williamsburg. He wanted \u201creal schlock, available schlock, cheap schlock,\u201d ideally costing less than a dollar. And it needed to be properly documented.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease,\u201d he wrote, \u201cdo not bury me in unannotated schlock!\u201d<\/p>\n

Lemisch and his students organized a museum-style exhibition in Buffalo in October 1976. As news stories about this unlikely \u201cSchlock Czar\u201d spread, he started getting fan letters from people across the country, along with additional specimens.<\/p>\n

A woman from Brooklyn sent \u201ca piece of Bicentennial Patriotism good enough to eat.\u201d A woman from Muncie, Ind., contributed stars-and-stripes paper surgical caps worn, to her surprise, by the team that had recently operated on her.<\/p>\n

Two correspondents sent Lemisch the identical sanitary disposal bags, printed with the Liberty Bell, that had suddenly appeared in the women\u2019s bathroom in their campus library.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the Bicentennial has passed, I can still remember my amazement at being confronted with \u2018200 Years of Freedom\u2019 upon entering the toilet,\u201d a student at Rutgers wrote.<\/p>\n

At first Lemisch reveled in the public interest. But the attention \u2014 someone in San Jose, Calif., he claimed, had even named an omelet after him \u2014 left him feeling ambivalent.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time I cut off the interviews,\u201d he wrote in The New Republic that November, \u201cI had become Bicentennial Schlock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, he staged a revival of the exhibition in New York City in August 1977, at the headquarters of a union. In 1981, he donated the collection to Yale.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that future researchers will find the material a distinctive collection for reconstructing Americans\u2019 views of the past in 1976,\u201d he wrote at the time.<\/p>\n

Since then, Cochran said, it has seen use by classes and researchers. And an Uncle Sam Pez dispenser is currently on view in the Beinecke\u2019s new exhibition, \u201cUnfurling the Flag: Reflections on Patriotism,\u201d<\/a> alongside non-schlock like Yale\u2019s first printing of the Declaration and a typescript draft of Langston Hughes\u2019s poem \u201cLet America Be America Again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to prompt people to think about where their ideas about patriotism come from,\u201d Cochran said. \u201cThe Bicentennial was a formative moment for a lot of people, when the iconography was inescapable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, you can find the same Pez dispenser on eBay, along with tens of thousands of Bicentennial listings running heavily to coins, stamps, plates and ersatz Paul Revere pewter. But Lemisch\u2019s collection includes many items so lowly \u2014 wet wipes, dry-cleaning bags, plastic straws in patriotic sleeves \u2014 that they may survive nowhere else.<\/p>\n

Patriotic Dixie cups and cereal boxes might seem to epitomize the kind of populist \u201chistory from below\u201d that Lemisch championed. But he saw things differently.<\/p>\n

Bicentennial schlock, Lemisch wrote in The New Republic, had \u201cfloated down from above, and responded to no popular longing to celebrate the Bicentennial.\u201d It was \u201cthe Watergate of patriotism\u201d \u2014 a \u201chealthy demystification\u201d that made Americans \u201cwisely cynical\u201d about the official history they were peddled.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince Schlock was the Bicentennial\u2019s most pervasive manifestation and perhaps its most enduring heritage,\u201d he wrote, \u201cit almost seems, emotionally speaking, as if there was no Bicentennial at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, historians take a more sanguine view. For all its tensions and contradictions, they argue, the Bicentennial added up a powerful cultural moment. It spawned both new scholarship<\/a> and a boom in popular history,<\/a> powered by a more emotional, personal way of relating to the past<\/a>. And Lemisch\u2019s deadpan museum \u2014 along with the delighted public response to it \u2014 was very much a part of it.<\/p>\n

And this year\u2019s Semiquincentennial? Then, as now, there has been debate over its focus and political meaning, which has intensified as President Trump has moved to put his own stamp on the anniversary. And while there are plenty of exhibitions and events<\/a> on tap across the country, there has been much less investment and enthusiasm overall.<\/p>\n

Which isn\u2019t to say there is no merch. The websites for both America250<\/a>, the nonpartisan federal planning group created by Congress in 2016, and Freedom 250<\/a>, an alternate effort backed by President Trump, offer tasteful hats, mugs, playing cards and pickleball paddles. But so far, unapologetic 1976-style schlock appears thin on the ground.<\/p>\n

You could chalk the schlock gap up to shifts in consumer culture, growing political polarization or the fact that schlock \u2014 or slop? \u2014 has moved online. But even back in 1976, Professor Lemisch struggled to draw definitive conclusions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does Bicentennial Schlock mean?\u201d he wrote. \u201cI don\u2019t exactly know. I find that deeply embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMore research,\u201d he added, \u201cis needed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S.A. at 250 Yale\u2019s Bicentennial Schlock collection offers a window into the star-spangled commercialism that swept the country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[80607,85403,85404,80608,83325,85405,85402,9,11,10,1876,79268,29983],"class_list":["post-216712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-archives-and-records","tag-beinecke-library","tag-bicentennial-schlock-collection","tag-collectors-and-collections","tag-history-academic-subject","tag-jesse-lemisch","tag-memorabilia-and-souvenirs","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-united-states-semiquincentennial-2026","tag-yale-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}