In honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we devoted the design and inventory of our flagship Bookmobile to “We the People” to celebrate and examine the democratic ideals that have informed our nation’s founding and subsequent history.
We took this inventory on a 27-day tour, tracing the geography of the American experiment through all thirteen original colonies.
“It’s an awkward time to be celebrating the 250th. We’re going to go deep into the literary, deep into the discussion about where we are as a country and what we need to do to redeem and fight for that idea, We the People.”
John Avlon, historian and author
Seriously Entertaining at Joe’s Pub
The tour began June 9 at The Public Theater in Manhattan with House of SpeakEasy’s flagship program Seriously Entertaining, presenting a conversation featuring James Basker, Terrance Hayes, Chyana Marie Sage, and Heidi Schreck, co-hosted by journalist and historian John Avlon and Library of America President Max Rudin.
“Each generation of Americans inherits the responsibility and the task of asking who has been left out of the “we” in We the People—and working to take our democracy where we believe it needs to go.”
Max Rudin, President and Publisher of Library of America
Hitting the Road
After the show, we set out for the northern leg of our tour, visiting cities in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine (part of Massachusetts in 1776). In Boston, we brought the Bookmobile to a Boys & Girls Club. We parked right outside the main entrance. Staff brought out a steady stream of eager students while a school bus dropped them off in large waves every 20 minutes. We propped up signs down the street so pedestrians also trickled in here and there.
As is often the case, our visitors were curious about the Bookmobile and its inventory, so we had plenty of opportunities to share our mission. More often than not, whenever I was prompted for a recommendation, I found myself presenting the titles on our top shelf, where we kept thematic works from Library of America, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and Applewood Books.
Our visitors are surprised enough to learn that we provide something free without a catch, but they’re additionally struck by the quality of our inventory. These works weren’t simply biographies or secondary studies of Lincoln or Douglass, but anthologies of their own writings. People are fascinated by the prospect of grappling with these figures directly, by the chance to sit with primary documents as a historian would.
“If the semiquincentennial is to be a contemplation and celebration of our history, what better way to do so than to make amateur historians of our visitors?”
Don Geci
The Journey South
On the second leg of the tour, we drove south from New York City through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. In Charlotte, we brought the Bookmobile to a secured spot in the center of Freedom Park. Fortuitously, a bagpipe player had come to the park to practice, and after a short conversation, he was happy to provide our Bookmobile with live music. The whine of the instrument drew the attention of the whole park, and families from all corners slowly made their way over to the truck.
The diverse range of reading levels on the Bookmobile meant anyone could leave with a new book suited to them. I supplemented the denser texts with equivalent readings for children: Magic Tree House: Revolutionary War on Wednesday, I Survived the American Revolution, and We the Kids, among others.
“In some instances, everyone in the family was leaving with a book on American history, and I wondered whether the American Revolution would creep into their conversations over breakfast or at the dinner table.”
Don Geci
The Sites of the Revolution
Alongside our outings, we made an effort to bring the Bookmobile to the storied sites of the American Revolution; after all, many of the greatest scenes are illustrated on the sides of the truck.
In communities like Plymouth, Lexington and Concord, Yorktown, Princeton, Trenton, and Philadelphia, we engaged local communities with their own history. There was an additional level of enthusiasm here for our selection since many visitors had just enough context to jump into something as otherwise daunting as Washington’s war correspondence or Jefferson’s drafts of the Declaration of Independence.
In such places, conversations surrounding the literature, the American Revolution, American values, and the current state of American politics usually came with more depth on account of lifelong familiarity and exposure. It added a layer of immersion to the tour that I found especially contemplative; these deployments often had a poetic quality to them. We made a stop in Pilgrim Memorial State Park, where the Mayflower first landed in 1620, on the second day of our month-long tour, tying the beginning of our journey to the beginning of American colonial settlement.
What’s Next
All in all, we made 26 deployments in 20 cities across the former 13 colonies. We gave away nearly 6,000 books. This tour was a vehicle for reexamination, a profound experience that substantially informed my own appreciation for America on its semiquincentennial. In the near future, I hope to articulate the entire journey in a detailed travelogue—to highlight not only the encounters on the road, but also the great works of our inventory, which I had the pleasure of sitting with in the passenger seat of the Bookmobile and the lobbies of our hotels.
I look forward to sharing the experience and its impressions with all of you. Happy 250!
Don Geci
Bookmobile Manager
