Americans will encounter the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026 through four distinct but intertwined forms of remembrance: commemoration, celebration, memory, and history. The four perspectives constantly shift and interconnect, often in surprising ways.
Celebration recalls the highest ideals and greatest accomplishments of the nation’s story, finding patriotism in common purpose and high ideals. It offers the appeal of parades and fireworks, festivals, and flags. Commemoration, on the other hand, is often solemn, asking for acknowledgment of what has been lost as well as gained, of sacrifice and theft, of forgetfulness and neglect. Memory, for its part, reflects on the ways personal lives interweave with the public events of the past, finding joy and sadness, pride and anger in family, place, and faith. History is dispassionate, built on careful investigation and documentation, on open-mindedness and skepticism.
The four kinds of remembrance evoke conflicting emotions. Celebrants can find the sober tones of commemoration out of place, while displays of patriotic celebration can seem hollow and hypocritical to those who seek commemoration. People who identify with valued ancestors can find the clinical analysis of history an affront, while those who value documented history can find in memory a form of wishful thinking.
Despite the intrinsic and unavoidable tensions among these different forms of remembering, Americans need each form of engagement with the past. No single approach can provide an understanding of the national past that is both affirming and honest. A vast and diverse democratic nation, with a history of both centuries of enslavement and triumph over global dictators, both the dispossession of a continent and bold struggles for rights by the oppressed, is held together by ideals that must transcend personal identity and yet make personal connection. A democracy must seek both cohesion and truth in its past. That is no simple task. We must expect, and even welcome, a perpetual debate over remembrance.
The last half-century has seen the United States navigating this complicated landscape of memory in fraught ways. Scenes of conflict come to mind: football players kneeling during the national anthem, rioters invading the Capitol under flags of professed patriotism, Confederate names removed (and then restored) from military bases, protests in all 50 states in opposition to a president denounced as a would-be king.
These scenes of conflict play out within, and often in reaction to, a far more expansive past than the nation has ever before possessed. A fuller American history has emerged over the last six decades in the nation’s classrooms, museums, historic sites, and public programs. History museums, historic houses, and historical societies account for about half of all the nation’s 35,000 museums in communities across the country. Those sites of memory range from a reconstructed cabin of Davy Crockett’s childhood to the Vanderbilt family’s Biltmore Estate, from Mark Twain’s elegant home to the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, from the cabins of the enslaved to the ruins left by ancient nations in the Southwest, from the grand First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City to the gritty Tenement Museum in New York. Small museums present artifacts and stories in a cacophony of vernacular history meaningful to local people, while the Smithsonian Institution displays the vast collections of the nation in professionally orchestrated exhibits. Museums, archives, and libraries of all sizes eagerly share their treasures online for distant visitors.
Volunteers do much of the work of preserving and sharing this American past. These citizens repair houses and restore cemeteries that would otherwise be lost to time. Unpaid docents give their time and knowledge to help create intimate and informed visitors’ experiences even in Washington’s greatest museums. Amateur genealogists share their discoveries with others and welcome discoveries in return. Devotees of classic cars and classic rock music sustain vibrant online and real-world communities, weaving their passions together and into the fabric of history. Veterans’ groups recall lost comrades and long-ago victories that helped democracy live.
Documented history merges with local memory on historical signs that enliven roads, streets, and parks. The Historical Marker Database records nearly 240,000 markers in places across the United States, the number growing by hundreds every month. The markers embrace an ever-broader and deeper understanding, telling stories long forgotten that deserve to be remembered wherever people might pause. School groups work with historical societies and historians, with state governments and private donors, to connect the landscape with these reminders of the past.
The fuller American past would not flourish without Americans who take on the responsibilities of the past as careers. The historians of the National Park Service daily work at the boundaries of celebration and commemoration, on the borders of history and memory. They know that their devotion and years of continual education will not be repaid with high salaries and will sometimes be disrupted or even ended for political purposes. Across the nation at our historical parks, sites, battlefields, and more, interpreters from the NPS explain the complexities of American history to visitors of all political persuasions, without favor or evasion. Park historians work at the birthplace of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the Japanese internment camps in California. They interpret ancient archaeological sites and the three locations of the 9/11 attacks. Their work is inspiring and essential.
Much of the work that sustains remembrance takes place out of public sight. The National Endowment for the Humanities, founded by Congress in 1965, has sponsored nearly 70,000 projects in every state of the union. The endowment has supported major efforts of national and enduring impact, such as the papers of the Founders and the films of Ken Burns, but much of the funding from the NEH consists of small grants distributed, after rigorous nonpartisan review, through state humanities councils to local museums, schools, nonprofits, and writers. Those funds promote folklore and film, exhibits and enactments, documentary collections and innovative research. All 56 state councils, in red states and blue, have provided their communities with lectures, conferences, and exhibits through support from the NEH.
The most important caretakers of American remembrance are the hundreds of thousands of social studies teachers in every community in the nation. Every day, these teachers shoulder great responsibilities as the allies of young people. They explain matters of moral and political complexity to children struggling to comprehend who they are and where they fit in the American story. It is in the nation’s classrooms that children come to understand ideals, memories, and historical truths larger than themselves. Networks of cooperation and collaboration unite the teachers of social studies and history, who come together by the thousands at conferences, workshops, and online gatherings to bolster their own intellectual lives and share strategies successful in their own classrooms.
Networks of nonprofits help teachers by providing resources to enrich their teaching. Among the most successful has been National History Day, a nonpartisan entity that has for 50 years encouraged students and teachers to study the past “to inform the present and shape the future.” Students from sixth to twelfth grade integrate historical context, multiple perspectives, historical accuracy, historical significance, and historical argument. The projects start in schools, “public, private, parochial, charter, or homeschool,” and are improved through revision and additional research. The winning projects compete among 3,000 students, exploring every aspect of American history. National History Day has united teachers and students nationwide in memorable shared efforts to explore the national past.
As a result of these and related efforts, more Americans today experience U.S. history in more ways than any generation before. A broader range of people appear as shapers of the nation’s story and are represented in more ways. The result has not been a dilution or weakening of patriotism but its strengthening. We are living in what could be, and should be, embraced as a time of unprecedented national self-discovery.
Instead, the hard-won gains of the last half-century are now under concentrated attack. With a political agenda framed as a recovery of a lost mythical history, the Trump administration, its political allies in the states, and its promoters in the media relentlessly attack any form of remembrance that does not align with their vision of the nation’s past. They have commandeered institutions traditionally held above partisan favor and charged with preserving the nation’s most cherished memories: the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. They have issued edicts to the National Park Service to post signs with QR codes inviting visitors to report anything that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living” and does not celebrate “the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
The current regime has launched a systematic effort to make each form of remembrance into what they declare it should be. Its forms of celebration militarize patriotism. Its commemoration devolves into a garden of heroic statues. Its memory intentionally forgets Pride Month. Its history curricula portray American history as a zero-sum game in which the representation of more people must diminish the significance of others, in which frank acknowledgment of wrong destroys young people’s love for their nation. The regime narrows history under the guise of rigor and merit, often with disdain for teachers’ insights.
The assaults on remembrance have weakened the nation’s capacity for meaningful engagement with its history as the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches. Just as Americans have begun to explore a shared past far richer and more widely presented than any previous generation has known, remembrance has been damaged with a recklessness few imagined possible. While the great American traditions of volunteerism, local mobilization, and selfless devotion to the public good will sustain remembrance as best they can, institutions of remembrance must be rebuilt on firm and enduring foundations. That will require renewed federal support for national institutions, state-level reform of educational governance to empower teachers and students, and dedication to history and memory that local organizations can best sustain. Philanthropic and civic organizations must step up to promote a fuller remembrance of the nation’s past.
Future Americans will remember these years as a critical test of whether the nation allowed itself to forget its highest ideals. As we enjoy ceremonies in 2026, we might also recall that celebration without commemoration is vanity, that flattering memory without truthful history is self-delusion. The Declaration of Independence reckoned with wrongs of the past to open the new nation to ideals of equality. We honor that document when we extend and expand its principles, when we remember all the people who have made our country.