Bicentennial Year

January 8, 2026

by Tom Ewing

Fifty years ago, Virginia newspapers welcomed the start of 1976 with references to the importance of thinking about lessons from 200 years of American history. The front page of Richmond Times-Dispatch featured the headline, “Bicentennial Brings Red, White, Blue Year” and the official logo. The Culpeper News, in a New Year’s Day editorial, encouraged readers to “learn more about America’s origins and why many people were ready to die for independence.” The Daily Progress (Charlottesville) editorial, “The Bicentennial Year Begins,”  echoed this sentiment with a call for “preserving the great principles upon which this nation was founded and within the Constitutional precepts by which it is governed….It is a good time to review our entire experience as a free people–to take a sounding of our liberty and test its depth, and while doing so, test the depth of our commitment to its survival.”

Reflecting the generational tensions of the era, the Wytheville Community Collegian asked a question more boldly in a New Year’s Day editorial: “America: To Be Proud or Ashamed.” A review of key processes in American history, including the forced displacement of Indigenous People, centuries of slavery, incarceration of Japanese Americans, and bigotry toward religious groups, ethnic minorities, and the poor. The final two sentences conveyed this sentiment most clearly: “Until we have equality of housing, food, clothing, and education we have nothing to celebrate! Two hundred years of independence is fine, two hundred years of equality would be better!” By contrast, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, after reviewing all the difficulties of the past year, drew on this same history for a more encouraging outcome: “But above all, as this Bicentennial year begins, Americans can take heart in the knowledge that the courage, skill, dedication, and tenacity of our people which have sustained us over the past 200 years are still here to sustain us in the year to come. We have faced, and overcome, far more serious difficulties than can now be foreseen for 1976.”

Editorial cartoons linked these themes in visual humor. Several newspapers published a cartoon showing a barefoot (and possibly unclothed) boy beating the drum along with two men in colonial costumes reinforced the message of the caption: “The Newcomer.” A cartoon in the Northern Virginia Sun depicted an elderly man departing through a door into a snowy night while a boy stands in front of a mirror, wearing a colonial costume, no shoes, a tri-corner hat, and banner: “Spirit of ‘76.” 

Yet even Virginia newspapers sought lessons from history, they also capitalized on the Bicentennial with advertisements encouraging consumption during the national celebration. The Orange County Review published an advertisement on New Year’s Day with a baby, wearing a 1976 belt, sponsored by a car dealer. Several newspapers reported on the first “Bicentennial Baby” born in 1976 their regions. These themes — patriotism, critical evaluation, commercialization, and celebration — would reverberate through the Bicentennial year–and they continue to renovate into this Semiquincentennial year.