Philly Kicks Off 4th of July

by jordan | July 4, 2008 at 08:40 am | 268 views | add comment

Philadelphia, birthplace of the USA's independence movement, kicks off its Independence Day celebrations in high style.

At the Liberty Bell Center, descendents of those who signed the Declaration of Independence ceremonially tap the Liberty Bell, signaling the start of a nationwide bell-ringing.

Marching bands, dancers, patriotic figures and floats fill the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in grand Independence Day style, culminating with Broadway-style routines at the foot of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Everyone can enjoy the show thanks to giant video screens located at various points along the Parkway.

Then it's just a hop, skip and jump over to the Art Museum, at 26th and the Parkway, for the culminating event of July Fourth - the Sunoco Sweet Sounds of Liberty concert and fireworks (8 to 11 p.m.). If you've never been there in person, mend your ways.

This is the event of the holiday weekend, with Grammy Award-winner/University of Pennsylvania alumnus John Legend delivering his mellow style of R&B, along with other genres of music that fill the night.

Not all of the history surrounding America's early years warrants celebration, though should still be remembered:

Across Independence Mall on this Fourth of July, storytellers will entertain Philadelphia visitors with tales of the American colonists' struggle for independence. Literally beneath their feet, though, an equally stirring story of another people's quest for freedom waits to be told to a much wider audience.
It's a disquieting narrative about how the first president quartered nine slaves in the nation's first White House, a mansion at Sixth and Market Streets in the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Two years from now, a memorial to Washington's slaves will rise next to the Liberty Bell Pavilion on the site that was home to Washington and then John Adams. Being built by the National Park Service, the memorial will be a unique and different shrine to freedom than its famous neighbor. It cannot be built soon enough.

Long slighted in the retelling of the nation's birth, the irony of a slave-holding president only became widely reported to historic-area visitors last summer.

Independence Day (or, as most call it, Fourth of July) celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress in 1776. The very next year, Philadelphia celebrated with an official dinner as well as fireworks and parades, traditions which continue today, though official dinners have been replaced with barbecues and picnics.

(The last Independence Day I spent as an American resident, we enjoyed a picnic in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, surrounded by thousands of people spread out across the green, grilling and playing baseball, soccer and cricket.)