As soon as the news buzzed on their phones, Americans gathered spontaneously on street corners and front lawns — honking their horns, banging pots and pans, starting impromptu dance parties — as an agonizingly vitriolic election and exhausting four-day wait for results came to an end Saturday morning.
Just after The Associated Press and other news organizations declared that former Vice President Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump, fireworks erupted in Atlanta.
In Maine, a band playing at a farmers’ market broke into the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Neighbors ran out of their homes in Manhattan and assembled into an unplanned street party, whooping, dancing and high-fiving strangers.