In celebration of America 250, join The Bronx County Historical Society on Wednesday, July 1, 2026 to celebrate the grand opening of a new permanent exhibit at the Museum of Bronx History, The Bronx; Crucible of Liberty. Radicals, Runaways, & Revolutionaries; 1600–1850. The exhibit tells the little-known story of how the area of today’s Bronx and lower Westchester County shaped the American struggle for freedom.

Visitors will encounter Indigenous Lunaapeew peoples who practiced their own traditions of liberty long before European arrival; religious rebels like Anne Hutchinson; defiant printers like John Peter Zenger; everyday Patriots; and the enslaved who risked everything for freedom and ran away from their self-styled masters. The exhibit also highlights the abolitionists and radical democrats who insisted the American experiment remain unfinished in the years after the Revolution.