BRISTOL – This town’s historic Fourth of July parade is a spectacle of color and sound. Green sequined hats flash in the sunlight and red, white and blue flags wave in the air. Meanwhile, muskets boom, fifes whistle their shrilly melodies and drums beat rhythmically along.
“It’s electrifying,” said Jillian Gesualdi, artistic director of East End Theatre & Performing Arts, in East Providence, as she, along with some 40 students and family members, waited to get in the parade’s queue Thursday morning.
The annual extravaganza – billed as the oldest continuous Independence Day celebration in the nation – is part of the fabric of life in Bristol. It is unclear exactly when the parade began. Rev. Henry Wight of the First Congregational Church conducted the first patriotic exercises in 1785, which led to a regular annual celebration in the early 1800s, according to the parade’s website.
For some residents, like Jacqueline Brown, who has attended the parade since she moved to town in 1956, it is integral to her identity as a Bristolian.