Reaching the century mark in 1876 sparked a commercialized celebration and the occasion for the first World’s Fair held in the United States, the Centennial Exposition. It retold the founding story and debuted innovations including the telephone, electric lighting, the Remington typewriter and a monorail. Editorials lamented the people’s lagging civic spirit, saying the birthday had been reduced to hangovers and boys with firecrackers. But at the fair in Philadelphia, suffragists interrupted a ceremonial reading of the Declaration of Independence to remind attendees that women still could not vote. And Southerners were upset to see murals of Civil War victory, insisting that bygones should be bygones.
President Ulysses S. Grant’s proclamation asked Americans to attend religious services and thank “Almighty God” for blessing the nation. But the White House that year was decided in a backroom deal in which Republicans got the presidency and the South got the end of Reconstruction; that election remains the nation’s most undemocratic. And on centennial day in South Carolina, a patriotic parade of Black soldiers was interrupted by white nationalists looking for a fight. When all was said and done, seven freedmen were lynched in the massacre at Hamburg.
A theme is revealed in the United States’ first hundred years that continues to shape it: The country might be imperfect, but it is ordained and favored by fate; not even a civil war could stop its ascendance on the world’s stage. It emerged from the World War I as a global power, and success was a measure of all America had done.
But its stature was diminished by its politics at home — on race and gender, on class and immigration. And as much as prosperity has been the nation’s blessing, without equality, success for the few comes at the expense of the many. That’s bad for business and for a republic.
The nation’s 150th anniversary in 1926 was labeled “America’s Greatest Flop” in one publication. The official fair was so unpopular and poorly managed that it fell into receivership. It recouped money by hosting a heavyweight boxing match: Champion Jack Dempsey lost the title to Gene Tunney, a U.S. Marine. President Calvin Coolidge shared the country’s July Fourth birthday and used his sesquicentennial address to recite the nation’s story, extol the founders’ virtues and cast slavery’s “ultimate extinction on American soil” as the hard problem that the country had proudly solved. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was sung at the opening ceremonies, and the first observance of what has become Black History Month was held.
The Roaring Twenties’ laissez-faire approach to capitalism and democracy, though, prioritized business interests over social reforms, leaving just as much room for progress as for decline. The Great Depression and the Great Migration, on the heels of the Great War, contributed to a national identity crisis, a changing economy, and a democracy broken by state-sanctioned discrimination and violence.