Where does your Bicentennial story end up?
When you take a few minutes to share your memory of 1976, it doesn’t disappear into an inbox or sit on a forgotten website.
Your story becomes part of a national collection, one built by people who were there when America turned 200. These personal memories will be shared in 2026 for America’s 250th, giving future generations a first-hand look at what it felt like to celebrate our nation’s birthday.
Your voice matters—and your experience deserves to be remembered.
Bicentennial Memory Project is a private, nonpartisan grassroots newsletter dedicated to helping Americans tell, share and preserve their stories.
Transcription
Denyse:
Lori and I are blowing our minds right now because we just realized, what if the stories we are collecting now in 2025 and 2026 are read in 2076 by the Americans celebrating the 300th anniversary of the country? That's insane, right?
Lori:
It's insane. But then when you think about it, 1976 is 50 years ago already. And so our stories from 1976 and the bicentennial, there's a lot of people that don't have any idea what was going on then either. And that's one of the great things about sharing our stories and our memories and putting them in writing and preserving them and passing them on in any way that works for us. And that's really what we're trying to do here and try to help all of you do the same thing.
Denyse:
Exactly. And we are going to collect these stories on Substack. They'll be publicly posted. You'll be able to share and enjoy these stories. Hopefully it sparks memories for you. But our goal when the project is finished is to get these stories archived. So we'll figure that out. We haven't quite figured out the best way to archive them. Definitely Internet Archive. But if you have ideas, drop them in the comments for us because we'd love to do it. We really want to preserve the memories of everyday Americans and our everyday lives from 1976 because history matters. And our histories matter, right?
Lori:
That's right.
Denyse:
Make sure to subscribe to the Substack because you want to stay in touch with us and what's going on. And we can't wait to share everything that we get in terms of stories with you. We're so excited.
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