This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. She wrote the piece and delivered it at President Clinton's first inauguration Jan. 20, 1993. There also will be recorded excerpts played of the voices of Paul Robeson, President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Then the music begins on a weathered wooden stage erected on the southern end of the park to commemorate Meridian Hill's role as the first national park for the performing arts.
People come out with food.
There's picnics, fireworks, drummers, African American, Hispanic, Vietnamese. Long before the park went into ruin and then came back to life, Meridian Hill was the site of sunset concerts attended by people who came to watch the sunset over the distant Blue Ridge Mountains. That was in the 1840s, said Steve Coleman. Before and during World War II, the park also had summer concerts that drew performers such as the Von Trapp family singers of Austria. The Fourth of July shows have always featured area musicians, from Bo Diddley Jr., nephew of the great Bo Diddley, to the D.C. Youth and Junior Orchestras, who one year played the 1812 Overture.