In this episode we discuss the Real History of the July 4th Holiday for America's 250th Birthday!

From 1776 to Reconstruction-era Savannah — Frederick Douglass, the South's July 4th boycott, famous birthdays, and a Mars landing. American history podcast, Independence Day, Everything that happened on America's birthday!

Ryan and co-host Julie cover the full history of July 4th — the founding, why the post-Civil War South refused to celebrate Independence Day for decades, how Savannah, Georgia experienced two different Fourth of July celebrations during Reconstruction, and a bonus segment on famous birthdays and events with nothing to do with American independence.

John Adams believed July 2nd was the correct date. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote "all men are created equal," owned more than 600 enslaved people.

Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” was a demand that America live up to its own founding words, not a rejection of them.

After the Civil War, much of the white South boycotted July 4th for decades.

Savannah, Reconstruction produced two parallel Fourth of July observances

The Beach Institute- Beach Institute African American Cultural Center was a key center of Black civic life in that era.

Famous July 4th Birthdays

• Calvin Coolidge (1872)

• Eva Marie Saint (1924)

• Neil Simon (1927)

• George Steinbrenner (1930) — Bought the NY Yankees

• Queen Sonja of Norway (1937)

• Post Malone (1995) — Syracuse, NY

• Malia Obama (1998) — Eldest daughter of President Barack Obama

Historical Events (Not About Independence)

• 1817 — Erie Canal

• 1855 — Walt Whitman

• 1997 — NASA's Mars Pathfinder lands on Mars

• 2012 — Scientists at CERN announce the discovery of the Higgs boson particle — "the God particle"

• 1971 — Koko the gorilla

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