2. Firecrackers were not used in the earliest Fourth of July celebrations, as they hadn’t been exported to America yet.
“Interestingly, firecrackers were reported to have been part of Fourth of July celebrations only after the holiday’s 11th year,” Dotz says. “The norm before then was ‘illuminations’—where people placed candles in their windows—as well as bonfires, bells, musket fire, and loud parades.”
Also, the earliest Fourth of July celebrations involved using explosives to send anvils into the air. According to Firecrackers, “A blacksmith’s anvil was placed on the ground and a bag of gunpowder with a fuse was placed on top of it. Finally, another anvil was placed upside down on top of the bag, the fuse was lit, and everybody scattered. This was to avoid being crushed like a cartoon character, because the top anvil was propelled into the air before returning heavily to the ground. It was said you could hear the sound of a good anvil shoot for miles in all directions.”
In 1787, a shipping merchant named Elias Haskett Derby brought a few boxes of firecrackers to America on a cargo ship from China, and he sold out immediately. After that, they became a staple of Independence Day celebrations, as gun- and anvil-shooting were deemed too dangerous for family events.
3. In the South, where the politicians and plantation owners believed that states should hold all the power, Fourth of July was not a big holiday until the 1930s.
There, firecrackers were used to celebrate Christmas between the 1830s and 1930s.They were particularly popular with the enslaved African Americans, who got Christmas off and used whatever change they could scrounge up to buy them. If they couldn’t afford firecrackers, enslaved people would fill pig bladders up with air, tie them closed, and then throw them on the fire so they’d pop. It’s possible that plantation owners were reluctant to encourage the celebration of Independence Day, which lauds overthrowing the people in power. And they definitely wanted to encourage their enslaved populations to put their faith in Jesus, who would free them only in the afterlife. This is probably why, in a vintage firecracker-label collection, you’ll see images of Santa Claus, as well as racist caricatures of African Americans and even slurs about poor white people, like “Geo’gia Crackers.”