He had looked at the bell, listened to talk of freedom, and thought about his own poor, hemmed-in black neighborhood. What did the bell have to do with that?
"It seemed like a big party that I wasn't invited to," recalls Coard, now a 43-year-old criminal attorney, who could not have known that more than 30 years in the future, he would be instrumental in opening the party up to everyone.
Back then, in the early 1970s, the story visitors heard at Independence National Historical Park was one of freedom, liberty and opportunity as reflected in the pale faces of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin. But today, as the city and the park service welcome tens of thousands of visitors to this week's July Fourth celebrations, the stories have changed - and changed radically.
Yes, at the bell the video and exhibits still portray liberty and freedom and Washington and Jefferson, but they also talk about slave-owning Founding Fathers, about abolitionism and the civil-rights movement. Visitors learn that the Liberty Bell was a symbol for the women's suffrage movement, for immigrants protesting discrimination in the New World, for human-rights activists everywhere. They learn that the idea of freedom evolves, that the American journey is incomplete.
None of this was part of ranger talks 35 years ago. But it's there now, largely because of a house long gone, the President's House, where George Washington and John Adams lived, worked and invented the presidency, and where Washington kept at least nine slaves.
