HOW DOES A NATION DIVIDED CELEBRATE ITSELF?

A handful of prominent Americans were tasked with bringing America together on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. They had to get creative.

- ALEXIS COE

In July the Declaration of Independence turns 250, an anniversary I've long spoken of as though the British were coming, because events this large don't arrive, they advance. Which is to say that, for years, anticipation mostly meant speculation laced with dread: much fretting, some quiet fatalism, and no small fear that the anniversary might become either patriotic kitsch or political retribution wrapped in bunting.

Most Americans don't know that historians like myself, as well as museum leaders and other assorted custodians of national memory, have been gathering for years to ask what 250 might look like, and under whom, because for better or worse the president is also the historian-in-chief. A 250 under Donald Trump, Joe Biden, or-briefly imagined-Kamala Harris suggested not merely different commemorations but competing origin stories, rival versions of the nation itself.

Then came President Biden's appointment of Rosie Rios-the 43rd treasurer of the United States and the woman who fought to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill-to chair the America250 Commission, a bipartisan body chartered by Congress in 2016 supported by a nonprofit fundraising arm and a federation of state commissions meant to push programming outward rather than stage everything from Washington.

Suddenly the semiquincentennial had a plot twist. It had landed in the hands of a steward, not a culture warrior, raising the harder question: Could an anniversary this loaded be curated without being captured? Think jubilee, but with more brand sponsors and fewer monarchs, a "coalition of public and private partners," including members of Congress, cabinet officials, and handpicked private citizens like Kellyanne Conway and Jack Schlossberg. Its ambitions run from museum exhibitions and oral history projects to grants, festivals, classroom initiatives, and the sweeping "350 by 250" goal of engaging all 350 million Americans by July 4, 2026.