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Michigan preps for an American birthday party muted by political divides

Chelsea Bicentennial Inc. Committee Member Don Wood, left, and time capsule “keeper of the key” Jayma Ayn Bollinger cut the ribbon around a 50-year-old time capsule buried at Chelsea District Library in Chelsea on Friday, June 26, 2026. Bollinger was the first baby born after the burial of the capsule in Chelsea, earning her the designation of “keeper of the key.” Inside the time capsule were envelopes first purchased by families in 1976, containing family records, photographs, newspapers and more, left for their future selves and descendants. The event drew a large crowd eager to see the contents of the capsule. Photo credit: Ella Miller/Bridge Michigan.

by Ron French, Bridge Michigan 

By all accounts, it was a festive time in Chelsea in the weeks surrounding the nation’s bicentennial on July 4, 1976.

There was a barn dance and tricycle races. The American Legion hosted a chicken broil. And at the town library, residents wrote notes to be read 50 years later. Town officials buried a time capsule filled with letters and voice recordings for future residents.

In a full circle moment, that time capsule was opened Friday evening as part of a celebration of the country 250th birthday. Doing the honors: Jayma Ayn Bollinger, who the city designated as “keeper of the key” near her birth 50 years ago.

But across the state and country, semiquincentennial events are shaping up to be markedly more muted than in 1976, a reality organizers attribute at least partially to the political dynamics of a time when what divides us threatens to overshadow what unites us.

“There a lot of negativity out there now,” Robert Doran-Brockway, project director of America 250MI, told Bridge Michigan. “The country is in a tough position as far as bipartisanship.”

The state America 250MI committee distributed $2 million to local museums and historical societies ahead of the nation anniversary. There will be coordinating readings of the Declaration of Independence in about 60 communities around the state, in at least seven languages.

Michigan did send representatives to the “Great American State Fair” that several musical artists and at least seven states, including neighboring Illinois, backed out of amid complaints it had been politicized by President Donald Trump.

A recent found that 62% of Americans were dissatisfied with the way democracy is working, and 83% said elected officials do not care what people like them think.

survey found the partisan divide even affects how we dress for the holiday, 52% of Republicans saying they’d wear red, white and blue clothing for the Fourth, compared to 20% of Democrats.

Three-quarters of Democrats and half of Republicans said events celebrating the country’s 250th anniversary had grown too political.

Musical acts like The Commodores, Bret Michaels and Martina McBride canceled appearances at the festivities in Washington, citing that what had been billed as a nonpartisan celebration had become politically divisive.

The president has called his planned Independence Day speech on the National Mall a “Trump rally,” and is selling “” merchandise on his online store.

Michigan is sending 11 employees from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development to the nation capital for the fair, which runs through July 10.

They’ll operate a roughly 600-square-foot Michigan display that MDARD spokesperson Lynsey Mukomel described as a cross between a “trade show booth” and a “strip mall.” It includes a mechanical milking cow, a robotic arm like those used in auto assembly plants, and an interactive map of the state.

“The goal is, once they experience it, they’ll be motivated to visit Michigan,” Mukomel said of attendees.

State-sponsored history

The $2 million distributed through the America 250MI included grants to 88 communities, but most of the funds are not being used specifically for 250th anniversary celebrations.

Among them: a 100^th anniversary commemoration of a near Ishpeming in 1926; a one-act play celebrating Norwegian immigration in Kalamazoo and renovations of the Museum of Ojibwe in St. Ignace.

Most of the funds went to support local historical efforts, such as digitizing records and “brick and mortar projects” that will outlast the semiquincentennial, said Doran-Brockway, who headed the grant process.

That similar to the strategy Michigan used in 1976, when went to projects around the state. That the equivalent of $5.8 million today, or almost three times the spending power Michigan allocated for the nation 250th birthday.

Doran-Brockway told Bridge he recalls the fanfare around the bicentennial when he was a boy in New York. “I stood with my grandmother and grandfather at the Verrazzano Bridge and watched the tall ships,” which were part of the national celebration, he said.

In Michigan, Rachel Clark, now on the reference staff of the , grew up in a home festooned for the bicentennial. “There was a switch plate in our family room with a bicentennial logo,” she said. “My dad had cuff links and a tie tack. There were images of Paul Revere on plates. There was a candy dish that was a giant version of the logo.”

Clark had no choice in the matter: her father, Howard Lancour, was the executive director of the Michigan American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, and spent five years working on the state effort to celebrate the nation 200^th birthday in style.

“It was a lot,” she said.

CBS ran each night in prime time for two years leading up to the celebration, and because there were only a handful of TV channels, almost everyone saw at least some of them.

“The entire country was united,” Doran-Brockway said. “The nation was ready to get past” President Richard Nixon resignation in 1974 and the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975, “and ready to come together. I remember there was red, white and blue everywhere.”

Fifty years later, he lamented, “I do not see that happen everywhere.”

A collective moment

There appear to be fewer “250” logos on red, white and blue merchandise this year than bicentennial logos 50 years ago, partly because there are and logos, one created by Congress a decade ago () and another by a Trump executive order last year ().

Some Michigan communities, including and , will have bigger-than-usual fireworks displays to help celebrate the 250th birthday, but that is not with the aid of state dollars.

Mackinac Bridge officials aren’t installing the kind of huge “76” light display that could be seen from as far away as Cheboygan in 1976. The bridge 30-foot-by-60-foot flag will be unfurled on the Fourth of July, if the weather cooperates, as it is on six holidays a year.

Doran-Brockway remains hopeful that the semiquincentennial will be special. He is spearheading an effort to read the Declaration of Independence in at the same time on July 8, which is the 250th anniversary of when the document was first read to the public.

So far, more than 60 groups have signed up to read the document, from the gravesite of a revolutionary war veteran in Farmington Hills, to Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island, to the state Capitol to the Paw Paw Lake Yacht Club. In Grand Rapids, it will be read in seven languages.

Michigan readings will be among more than 600 across the country and the globe, all beginning at 6 p.m., the time when the document was first read.

“We’re bringing back the spirit of America through this simple act of reading the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he said.

It OK if some Americans don’t feel like celebrating this year, Doran-Brockway said. “This country is not perfect — Thomas Jefferson owned 600 people,” he said. “And the Declaration of Independence is an imperfect document.”

Yet that document and the country it founded have been around for 250 years, through good times and bad. That a lesson for all of us, he said.

No matter the “great turmoil,” Doran-Brockway said, “I believe we will get through.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and a founder of the Manchester Mirror.