2. See Alan St. H. Brock, A History of Fireworks (George G. Harrap & Co., 1949).
3. John Gould Fletcher, Arkansas (University of North Carolina Press, 1947), 269; Ron Taylor, “True South; Illegal Fireworks,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 30 June 1991, M2; Diana Karter Appelbaum, The Glorious Fourth: An American Holiday, An American History (Facts on File, 1989), 98; C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (Yale University Press, 1981), 832. See also Leonard I. Sweet, “The Fourth of July and Black Americans in the Nineteenth Century: Northern Leadership Opinion within the Context of the Black Experience,” Journal of Negro History 61 (July 1976): 256–75.
4. George Plimpton, Fireworks: A History and Celebration (Doubleday, 1984), 55; the reference here is to the tradition called “firing the anvil,” whereby blacksmiths would turn one anvil upside down, fill the hollow with powder, place another anvil right-side-up on top of it, and then light a fuse, sending the anvil on top flying into the air. In Europe this custom was most often associated with the November 23 feast of St. Clement, patron saint of the blacksmith. Americans enjoyed firing the anvil so much that the celebration came to mark marriages, Christmas, New Year’s, and the Fourth of July; Nancy McDonough, Garden Sass: A Catalog of Arkansas Folkways (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975), 108.