
Image

Fourth of July Celebration in Centre Square, by John Lewis Krimmel, 1819.
Credit: Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
By 1819 the event had become a largely white working class celebration, in contrast to earlier years when blacks and whites from all social classes gathered in the square facing Independence Hall. The 1819 painting depicts a festive crowd of white soldiers, merchants and citizens, assembled at tables and under tents, while a lone black boy runs away.