THE PEOPLE

Proponents

Gilbert Hood

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Gilbert H. Hood Jr. (1900-1985) represented the imaginative force that kept hope alive during the Bicentennia era. Though he started off as a milkman, Hood would work his way to become the President of H.P. Hood & Co. and Boston's Chamber of Commerce. His success kept Hood as an entrepeneural vision of grandeur even in the path of decline twoards the Bicentennial. In 1963, he would create the 1975 World Freedom Fair, Inc and work tirelessly to advocate for the selection of Boston as the site of a billion dollar United States Bicentennial expositon in 1976. To do so, Hood partnered with the energetic young minds of the Boston Redevelopment Authority's planning design group. The partnership resulted in the utopian vision of Expo '76, a symbol of rare confidence in American visions of the Bicentennial. Despite his eventual failure to win public support amid increasing municipal quarrels and rising urban decay, Hood's mission represented the hope that some still had for the reconciliation of America's proud past with that of its troubled present.

OPPONENTS

The extraordinary story of Boston's Bicentennial is only possible through the lives that shaped its eventual realization. As another visualization of the incredible human aspect behind the Boston Bicentennial, there are two interactive slideshows featured below. Each features at least three short biographies on either side of the celebration. The proponents, like Edward "Ted" Kennedy and Gilbert Hood of Expo Boston, are featured as "Proponents" to the idea of a massive bicentennial celebration. The opponents, Louise Day Hicks and Joe Moakley, symoblized the growing sentiments of disillusionment amongst the Bicentennial's biggest adversary: public groups. As you will see in the collection of support and detraction for the Bicentennial celebrations in Boston, there was an immense human element to Boston's Bicentennial.

Louise day Hicks

Louise Day Hicks was perhaps the most popular and notorious instigator of opposition against the celebration of the American Revolutionary Bicentennial. As a former Bosotn School Committee leader and City Coucil woman, her mission was to protect South Boston at all costs. In the case of the exposition, Hicks would host rallies in protest of Expo '76 for the local organization, Residents of South Boston. As the busing crisis unfolded in Boston, Hicks saw busing as a violation of the constitution, and urged her followers, now in an antibusing orgization known as Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR) to oppose the bicentennial as a fruitless gesture. It also threatened to change the demographic and environmental cohesion of her communties, which infuriated her constituents, Throughout the various stages of the bicentennial, Hicks led a South Boston to fight against what many perceived as a broken system.