Patriotism's Secret History (Page 3)

Robeson, at the time one of the best-known performers on the world stage, became, through this work, a voice of America. Broadcasts and recordings of "Ballad for Americans" (by Bing Crosby as well as Robeson) were immensely popular. In the summer of 1940, it was performed at the national conventions of both the Republican and Communist parties. The work soon became a staple in school choral performances, but it was literally ripped out of many public school songbooks after Robinson and Robeson were identified with the radical left and blacklisted during the McCarthy period. Since then, however, "Ballad for Americans" has been periodically revived, notably during the bicentennial celebration in 1976, when a number of pop and country singers performed it in concerts and on TV.

During World War II, with lyricist Lewis Allen, Robinson co-wrote another patriotic hit, "The House I Live In." Its lyrics asked, and then answered, the question posed in the first line of the song, "What is America to me?" The song evokes America as a place where all races can live freely, where one can speak one's mind, where the cities as well as the natural landscapes are beautiful. The song was made a hit by Frank Sinatra in 1945. Sinatra also starred in an Oscar-winning movie short--written by Albert Maltz, later one of the Hollywood Ten--in which he sang "The House I Live In" to challenge bigotry, represented in the movie by a gang of kids who rough up a Jewish boy.

"The House I Live In," like "Ballad for Americans," was exceedingly popular for several years but became controversial during the McCarthy period and has largely disappeared from public consciousness. Its co-author, Lewis Allen, was actually Abel Meeropol, a high school teacher who also penned "Strange Fruit," the anti-lynching song made famous by Billie Holiday. In the 1950s Meeropol and his wife adopted the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after their parents were executed as atom spies. Despite this, Sinatra kept the song in his repertoire. Perhaps the most astonishing performance of "The House I Live In" was at the nationally televised commemoration of the centenary of the Statue of Liberty in 1986, when Sinatra sang it as the finale to the program, with President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan, sitting directly in front of him.

Only a handful of Americans could have grasped the political irony of that moment: Sinatra performing a patriotic anthem written by blacklisted writers to a President who, as head of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1950s, helped create Hollywood's purge of radicals. Sinatra's own left-wing (and nearly blacklisted) past, and the history of the song itself, have been obliterated from public memory.

Even during the 1960s, American progressives continued to seek ways to fuse their love of country with their opposition to the national government's policies. The March on Washington in 1963 gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. famously quoted the words to "My Country 'Tis of Thee." Phil Ochs, then part of a new generation of politically conscious singer-songwriters who emerged during the 1960s, wrote an anthem in the Guthrie vein, "Power and Glory," which coupled love of country with a strong plea for justice and equality. Interestingly, this song later became part of the repertoire of the US Army band. And in 1968, in a famous antiwar speech on the steps of the Capitol, Norman Thomas, the aging leader of the Socialist Party, proclaimed, "I come to cleanse the American flag, not burn it."

In recent decades, Bruce Springsteen has most closely followed in the Guthrie tradition. From "Born in the USA," to his songs about Tom Joad (the militant protagonist in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath), to his recent anthem for the victims of the September 11 tragedy ("My City of Ruins"), whom he urges to "come on rise up!" Springsteen has championed the downtrodden while challenging America to live up to its ideals. Indeed, by performing both "Born in the USA" and "Land of Hope and Dreams" at benefits for the families of World Trade Center casualties, Springsteen has coupled his anger at injustice with his belief in the nation's promise.

In each major period of twentieth-century history--the Progressive era, the Depression, World War II and the postwar era--American radicals and progressives expressed a patriotism rooted in democratic values and consciously aimed at challenging jingoism and "my country, right or wrong" thinking. Every day, millions of Americans pledge allegiance to the flag, sing "America the Beautiful" and "This Land Is Your Land," and memorize the words on the Statue of Liberty without knowing the names of their authors, their political inspiration or the historical context in which they were written.

The progressive authors of much of America's patriotic iconography rejected blind nationalism, militaristic drumbeating and sheeplike conformism. So it would be a dire mistake to allow, by default, jingoism to become synonymous with patriotism and the American spirit. Throughout our nation's history, radicals and reformers have viewed their movements as profoundly patriotic. They have believed that America's core claims--fairness, equality, freedom, justice--were their own. In the midst of current patriotic exuberance both authentic and manipulated, then, it is useful to recall the forgotten cultural legacy of the left. We need to ask, once again, "What is America to us?"

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