Spirit of '76

The Boys of '76 was a senior drum and bugle corps based in Racine, Wisconsin. They were sponsored from their inception in 1916 by the Racine American Legion Post 76.

The Boys' championship year of 1923 hinged on their cross-country train trip to San Francisco to compete in the American Legion national convention and parade competition.
The 67-member drum corps, and city of Racine, took advantage of stops along the way in such cities as St. Paul, Butte, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs, Denver, Omaha, and Milwaukee to parade and play for the locals. The Racine city fathers sent along 20 attractive girls to pass out literature extolling Racine's virtues while the corps played.

The Boys of '76 won that 1923 parade competition, comfortably beating out corps from Miami and Pasadena. A crowd of more than 20,000 welcomed them home and cheered them through the streets of Racine upon their return.

The corps' 1923 success was duplicated in 1924, at the American Legion national convention in St. Paul, at which the corps bested some 300 bands and drum corps to capture the championship. That drum corps competition, incidentally, was the first ever at which a numerical scoring system was used.

[DCW, 10/02, p.13; DCW, 2/03, p.5]

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