Sestercentennial Moments
Introducing a new feature for 'Americana'
On July 4, 1974, the Columbia Broadcasting Network (CBS) began a novel piece of television programming that would last until December 31, 1976: the Bicentennial Minute. Every night, at either 8:27 or 8:57 p.m., a sixty-second segment would appear narrated by national luminary—ranging from political figures such as Congresswoman Bella Abzug or President Gerald Ford to entertainers such as Lucille Ball or Jessica Tandy—who narrated what had happened on that day exactly 200 years earlier. (Here’s an example with actor Darren McGavin.) There were eventually over 900 of these segments. The narrator usually read a brief script that unfolded against visual images such as prints or paintings (we were still a decade and a half away from the visual panache of Ken Burns). Each segment ended by echoing celebrated TV news anchor Walter Cronkite—“the most trusted man in America”—who ended his show each weeknight with the line “and that’s the way it is,” which here became “and that’s the way it was.”
The nation’s celebration of its 200th birthday unfolded at what was a striking moment in U.S. history. It was originally to be presided over by President Richard Nixon, who lost his job amid the Watergate scandal in the summer of 1974. The nation was grappling also with defeat in the Vietnam War and an Energy Crisis that led to a spike in inflation. National morale was low. The Bicentennial in general, and Bicentennial Minutes in particular, provided a means to lift sagging spirits.
Given the ubiquity of television in these years—on any given night there would be tens of millions of people watching CBS—the segments soon became a fixture of everyday life. They were widely parodied in popular culture (here’s a pretty funny one from the deeply beloved Carol Burnett Show), and lingered on in national memory, though largely forgotten now.
We are now entering the runup to the Sestercentennial—less of a mouthful than its synonym, semiquincentennial—of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Given that, and the fact that I was a child at the time of the Bicentennial Minutes, and that I’ve been looking for a change in rhythm at the tail end of completing about a dozen book projects in the last decade, I thought I would use this space to try a little experiment.
I’m going to call it “Sestercentennial Moments.” As such a title suggests, the inspiration from Bicentennial Minutes is loose. I’m not going to run them daily—I’ll continue to post pieces on on other subjects—and engage as much with context as with historically specific events. I will also sometimes engage in comparisons between a day in 1774 and 1974 (or, for that matter 1824, 1874, or 1924). Each installment will end with the statement “and that’s the way it seems,” to reflect to more subjective epistemology of our time and my more modest authority on such subjects.
I’d say that the national mood is about as bad today as it was in the mid-seventies—maybe worse. I’d like to think that in some small way this experiment may help us grapple with our history— or perhaps simply provide a moment of refuge amid our busy days. I hope that may be useful.
And that’s the way it seems.
The first Sestercenntial Moment will run on July 4, 2024.