Parker is big, 17-hands-high big.

The chestnut gelding will play Paul Revere’s horse Friday night in Annapolis, a moment when historians and enthusiasts nationwide will hang lanterns to recreate the famous Massachusetts ride and kick off the American Revolution 250th anniversary celebrations.

Whatever Parker thinks of the honor, he’s keeping to himself.

Jason Coale, who will ride his horse down Maryland Avenue with Revere’s warning — “The regulars are out,” not “The British are coming” — has thought about the meaning of the Two Lights for Tomorrow event.

Parades and fireworks come every year to commemorate the birth of America. This one, though, is a special milestone.

Turmoil comes from Washington daily. Half the nation fears President Donald Trump’s seeming rush toward despotism. The other half angrily applauds the chaos.

What does it mean to celebrate the semiquincentennial — yes, it’s a word — over the months leading to July Fourth? What can Revere teach us today?

“Two hundred and fifty years ago, he was a patriot,” Coale said Wednesday at his barn on the Patuxent River. “Today, patriots are the ones on the left and the right who can stand together in the middle.”

There will be pageantry.

Reenactors and historians will carry LED lanterns to the State House and then to the balcony atop the dome starting at 7:15 p.m. By 8, they’ll signal Coale to ride down Maryland Avenue.

Annapolis poet laureate Jefferson Holland will recite “The Ride of Paul Revere.” The words, although they inaccurately describe that ride, seem appropriate today.

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The people will waken and listen to hear

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,

And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

The Maryland State House is standing in for the Old North Church in Boston, where the Sons of Liberty used lanterns on April 18, 1775, to signal that Royal troops were crossing Boston Harbor in a drive to find radical hideouts.

A network set up by Revere quietly left Boston and rode in secret to warn rebel leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock. No one shouted about the British because everyone was British.

Shots were fired in Lexington and Concord on April 19, and the American Revolution began.

In 2016, Congress set up the America250 Commission to, as a spokesperson put it, “create the largest, most inspiring, and unifying commemoration in the nation’s history,” culminating on July 4, 2026.

Unsatisfied, Trump set up his own White House task force in January. His order mentions the historic events, but also the president’s grievances with protesters and his plan for an American heroes sculpture garden.

Funding for some celebrations has been slashed. The National Endowment for the Humanities killed 85% of its grants. That includes 43% of the Maryland Humanities Council’s $1.2 million budget.

“If the money goes away for good, the impact on Maryland Humanities’ ability to continue our programs as they currently exist will be catastrophic,” said Claudia Allen, director of advancement for the council.

Even as Trump works to whitewash the American story, Maryland is working to expand it.

Gov. Wes Moore established the MD Two Fifty Commission with funding for grants from $500 to $7,000 to support local programs.

“I am descended from four grandparents who were immigrants. I was alive for the Bicentennial, and I remember it happening, but we didn’t participate,” said Michele W. Johnson, director of the Maryland commission.

“When I got this job two years ago, I asked my dad why, and he said it wasn’t for us. So my job is to make sure that no Marylander feels that way.”

Annapolis was a center of the Revolution. There was a Sons of Liberty chapter, and four signers of the Declaration lived in the small colonial city. Local families sent their sons to fight and die under George Washington.

Last fall, Chesapeake Crossroads and the Annapolis 250th Commission staged a drone-light recreation of the 1774 burning of the brig Peggy Stewart and its cargo of tea.

But Annapolis was also a slave port, and telling the story of the Revolution was long a tale of white patriots fighting for a flawed liberty.

That changed in recent years. Historic Annapolis, the nonprofit custodian of the story, has expanded its narrative with the perspectives of Black and Asian people.

The Maryland 250th celebration will culminate next year with the dedication of a monument to Black heroes of the Revolution in Annapolis.

It will transform the State House grounds once occupied by a statue of Roger Taney, the Supreme Court chief justice who ruled that Black people were forever an enslaved class.

“I like the idea that these lights are a beacon to call people together, to remember and to sort of unite in thinking about the Revolution,” said State Archivist Elaine Rice Bachmann, a member of the trust and the state commission.

“And, you know, are we living up to those ideals?”

Getting people to pay attention to history can be hard.

Jane Cox, director of Chesapeake Crossroads Heritage, convinced the state and Annapolis commissions to stage the Two Lights event. The idea took root in Virginia, but rides are planned in many states.

She enlisted Coale, a friend who runs the Marlboro Hunt Club in Prince George’s County, to play Revere. He’s been working around horses since he was 14.

In that way, he’s like the famed patriot he will portray.

Revere was a tradesman, too, working as a silversmith in a rambling house steps from the Old North Church. He helped devise the system of lights and riders that sent the warning to Lexington and Concord.

Plenty of people won’t want the celebrations to be political.

Yet, what if this is more than pageantry? If our president acts like a king, what lessons does the story of a patriot on a horse offer today?

“I’m trying to reconcile what we’re talking about,” Cox said. “Is this one of those moments that the past meets the present?”