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"THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND...." Woody Guthrie wrote a pretty powerful song back in 1940. He had an idea about what he thought America was and what it means to be an American. Born in Oklahoma in 1912, he lived with a father who fancied himself a cowboy and a mother who was a Kansas -born housewife who simply loved music. Growing up in Okemah, a farm town, Guthrie experienced loss at an early age with the death of his sister, the institutionalization of his mother, and his family's financial ruin as a result of an oil boom gone bust. But Guthrie's family wasn't the only one to suffer. Guthrie watched as many families in Okemah suffered financial and personal loss. Then along came the Great Depression. During this period, Guthrie got married and had three children. But like hundreds of other "Dust Bowl refugees," Guthrie found it difficult to support his family and so he hit the road, trying to find work. During his travels by train and hitchhiking, Guthrie cultivated a strong dislike of greed and a deep appreciation for the diversity of America's everyday people.1 In February of 1940, he wrote "This Land is Your Land," in response to Irving Berlin's song "God Bless America," which he heard repeatedly throughout his travels. He couldn't abide by the way that song seemed to obscure the "lopsided distribution of land and wealth" that he had seen and experienced his whole life.2 And so, an anthem was born.
The most amazing thing about this song is its staying power - over the years many singers have recorded this song, and, at the inauguration of our first Black president, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger carried on the tradition. What I like about the song is that it highlights the tensions within the United States over land, wealth, access, mobility, naming, and claiming ownership over many things, including this place and all its natural resources. And that differences aren't always about race or ethnicity: Guthrie was a white man who had suffered through the Depression and from his experience, his standpoint, wrote a song about what he saw as the American experience on the landscape, one that included the tensions between different...