1776
When the Brown family traded in the three bench seats of our Chevy Suburban for the six captain’s chairs of a specially-outfitted Chevy Buccaneer, the Four Ts rejoiced. (I am the oldest of the four Brown children - Tambi, Tifni, Todd, and Trev.) The establishment of four personal privacy zones within the vehicle resulted in less sibling friction during our cross-country summer vacations.
The consoles above the four swiveling seats in the back provided each passenger with a reading light and a headphone jack. With the turn of a knob, each child had three audio options: two cassette decks (Yes, two!) and the tiny black-and-white television set suspended from the ceiling behind the driver’s seat. Because of the TV’s notoriously poor reception, cassette tapes were our preferred form of entertainment.
To house our family’s extensive collection of cassette tapes, including an assortment of Time-Life compilations, my father constructed shelves beneath the windows along the left side of the van. The person who was assigned to sit in the chair behind the driver on a given day - road trips required seat rotation - was responsible for sliding the door open and retrieving the requested cassette tape from the shelf.
As we drove across the country each summer, we learned to sing the greatest hits of the 50s and 60s and 70s, along with railroad ballads and classic western songs. (Singing “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” while watching tumbleweeds roll across the prairie was a timeless pleasure.)
The most-requested cassette tape in the Buccaneer, summer after summer, was the musical “1776.” This Tony Award-winning Broadway musical featured William Daniels as John Adams, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, and Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin; these actors also starred in the 1972 film adaptation.
Every time Mom or Dad slipped “1776” into the cassette player, a heated sibling debate ensued. “You got to be Thomas Jefferson last time! Now it’s my turn.” “But I don’t want to be John Adams!” “You can be Ben Franklin!” The role of Richard Henry Lee was the consolation prize if you weren’t one of the big three.
“Sit Down, John,” “The Lees of Old Virginia,” and “The Egg” were our favorite songs on the album. The allure of “Sit Down, John” for children was getting to sing “It’s hot as hell in Philadelphia!” at the top of our lungs, hell being a word that we did not normally use in polite conversation. I always enjoyed singing “Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve” - the duet between John and Abigail Adams. Abigail was one of only two female characters in the show; Martha Jefferson was the other.
Two songs in the musical deeply distressed me: “Momma, Look Sharp” and “Molasses to Rum.” If it were up to me, we would have fast-forwarded through both of them. In retrospect, I’m glad those lyrics are entrenched in my memory.
In “Momma, Look Sharp,” a courier who delivers messages from George Washington’s camp to Congress imagines his own death on the battlefield. His poignant plea for his mother to come look for him before he dies was a stark reminder of the human toll of the revolution.
When South Carolina delegate Edward Rutledge sings “Molasses to Rum” in the second act, he highlights the hypocrisy of delegates from the Northern colonies, who claim to be opposed to slavery while reaping financial benefits from the slave trade. I cringed every time I heard Rutledge pretending to be a slave auctioneer.
In retrospect, I am grateful that our summer sing-alongs with the soundtrack of “1776” prompted me to grapple with the complicated reality of the founding of this nation. Even the wording of the Declaration of Independence gave me pause: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” All men? Perhaps just all white men?
Last week I read Rebecca Solnit’s book Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters. Solnit begins her chapter about the myth of a “real” America with these words: “The common denominator of so many of the strange and troubling cultural narratives coming our way is a set of assumptions about who matters, whose story it is, who deserves the pity and the treats and the presumption of innocence, the kid gloves and the red carpet, and ultimately the kingdom, the power, and the glory. You already know who. It’s white people in general and white men in particular, and especially straight white Protestant men, some of whom are apparently dismayed to find out that there is going to be, as your mom might have put it, sharing. The history of this country has been written as their story, and the news sometimes still tells it this way – one of the battles of our time is about who the story is about, who matters, and who decides.”
On the Fourth of July, many Broadway fans include a viewing of either “1776” or “Hamilton” as part of their patriotic festivities. The memorable closing lines sung by the cast of “Hamilton” speak to Solnit’s point: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” When I saw “Hamilton” on Broadway five summers ago, I was moved to tears during that number when Eliza sang, “I put myself back in the narrative.”
When I mark the Fourth of July this week, aware that American democracy is far more fragile than I could have fathomed as a child, I will be contemplating the narrative of this nation’s founding. Whose stories were suppressed in 1776? Whose voices were silenced? Whose stories continue to be suppressed in 2024? Whose voices continue to be silenced?
The Preamble to the Constitution, which I learned to sing from watching Schoolhouse Rock, begins with these aspirational words: “We the People, in Order to form a more perfect Union . . .” We the people still have work to do. The process of forming a more perfect union continues today. A line from the third stanza of the hymn “America the Beautiful” comes to mind: “America! America! God mend thine every flaw.” May it be so.
Invitation to Wonder: Whose stories have helped you to better understand the complicated history of America? What can you do to be a part of the work of forming a more perfect union?
