America Can Never Be Revolutionized Until Its Revolutionaries Become Americanized: The Peoples Bicentennial Commission and the United States Bicentennial, 1971-1976
Open AccessThe Peoples Bicentennial Commission was formed in 1971 as an attempt to both emphasize that the bicentennial celebrated an actual revolution and to fight against the commercialization of the celebration. A continuation of the New Left of the 1960s, the PBC sought to use America's radical tradition to promote leftist economic goals, like destroying the power of corporations. They scorned the sixties' New Left, as well as the traditional Old Left's, rejection of American history and patriotism. Instead, they felt that "America can never be revolutionized until its revolutionaries become Americanized." In Americanizing their radicalism, they focused on the American Revolution and cast the current day corporations and conservatives as Tories in their conception of its application to the seventies. Using many of the same methods of the sixties New Left, the Peoples Bicentennial Commission was able to bring the New Left into the seventies and provide a viable alternative to the official bicentennial celebration and the commercialization of the celebration.
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