The plan was to celebrate the Fourth of July with a televised extravaganza on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. One unstated goal was to show support for the president at a time of bitter division in the nation.
The president was Richard M. Nixon, and the year was 1970. Nixon was facing rising opposition to the Vietnam War after expanding the conflict into Cambodia. Wealthy friends of the president began organizing an Honor America Day co-hosted by evangelist Billy Graham and comedian Bob Hope. Capping the day would be a star-studded, “Salute to America” show at the Lincoln Memorial. The goal: to draw a record 500,000 people to Washington’s Mall to celebrate America’s birthday.
The 1970 event is the only parallel to President Trump’s takeover of July 4. Trump’s elaborate “Salute to America” will feature a speech by the president himself at the Lincoln Memorial, reserved seating for hundreds of VIPs, two fireworks displays and flyovers by the Blue Angels and Air Force One. Trump has also requested military tanks — Abrams tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles — on the Mall for the event.
By contrast, Nixon did not appear at the 1970 celebration; he was at his summer White House in San Clemente, Calif. But he did record a video that was played at the event.
The 1970 celebration was the brainchild of Reader’s Digest publisher Hobart Lewis. He recruited J. Willard Marriott, head of the Marriott hotel chain, to raise funds. Marriott insisted the event “will be absolutely free of politics. It’s not to promote anybody’s pet ideas.”
To underscore the nonpartisan theme Republicans and Democrats were honorary members of the organizing committee. Many Democratic politicians also supported the event.
But some were skeptical of the claim of nonpartisanship. New Left activist Rennie Davis, one of the “Chicago Eight” charged with inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, called the planned event “a Republican Convention” sponsored by “white, middle-class Republican men.”
Davis organized the “Emergency Committee To Prevent a July 4th Fistfight” to protest the event.
On the left, the Black United Front called for a black boycott of the event. On the right, the Rev. Carl McIntire, an advocate of total victory in the Vietnam War, said, “Patriots will have nothing to do with a convocation of compromise that desecrates our heritage with the ballyhoo of Hollywood.”