Video: 'America's Bicentennial' (5 videos)

(Sunday, July 4, 1976) — The United States celebrated the bicentennial of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence today with pageantry and prayer, with games and parades, with picnics and fireworks, with the peal of bells and the chant of protests.

President Gerald R. Ford made stops in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Independence Hall in Philadelphia and New York, where more than 200 ships paraded up the Hudson River in Operation Sail.