Celebrate the 4th with Flag Raising, Procession, and Fraunces Tavern Talks

The annual July 4th march proceeds from Castle Clinton to the South Street Seaport. Photo: Lower Manhattan Historical Association

For the ninth year, the Lower Manhattan Historical Association is sponsoring its Independence Day flag raising and parade, kicking off at 10 a.m. in the Battery’s historic Castle Clinton. Following the raising of the Betsy Ross-designed 13-star flag, all are invited to join the procession to the South Street Seaport, led by this year’s grand marshall, Assemblyman Charles Fall. 

The program continues at 2 p.m. at the Fraunces Tavern Museum’s Flag Room for the “It Happened Here” symposium of talks, with historian Kenneth Jackson the keynote speaker. 

On display at the museum: the Original Continental Army Manuscript Orderly Book with George Washington’s order to have the Declaration of Independence read to his troops in New York on July 9, 1776; the original July 18, 1776 New-England Chronicle printing of the Declaration of Independence; and the original advanced text of Martin Luther King, Jr’s speech from the March on Washington in 1963, saying that the Declaration and Constitution created “a promissory note to which all Americans would fall heir.”