Peter I. Rose
In 1939, when the United States was rife with various forms of White-supremacist ideology, when segregation was still legal, and “America Firster” sloganeering dominated the media, outside observers would be struck by a paradox. For all the ranting and raving about those who were not “real” Americans (meaning that they weren’t White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant), the United States was already quite unique among the nations of the world. It was clearly, as Walt Whitman had so eloquently put it, “a nation of many nations,” a society where those “of every hue and caste … of every rank and religion” were represented. That diversity was the theme of a stirring cantata, written and sung as a counter to the homegrown racist bigots. Called “Ballad for Americans,” it was made famous by the great African American singer and civil rights champion Paul Robeson. What’s that, lady? Am I an American? The singer responds to his own question by saying, I’m just an Irish, Negro, Jewish, Italian, French and English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Polish, Scotch, Hungarian, Litvak, Swedish, Finnish, Canadian, Greek and Turk and Czech and double-check American. And that ain’t all, I was baptized Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist, Lutheran, Atheist, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, Presbyterian, Seventh Day Adventist, Mormon, Quaker, Christian Scientist And lots more . 1 Those lines alone offered a lyrical description of the demographic diversity that existed in pre–World War II America. It was also a pre–Martin Luther King Jr. template of comity for our country—and for the rest of the world. Five years later, a near-parallel ballad was composed by Earl Robinson, this time in collaboration with lyricist Lewis Allan, and made popular by a very young Frank Sinatra. It was called “The House I Live In.” But instead of asking, “Am I an American?” the singer asks, “What is America to me?” He then answers his own question: What is America to me? A name, a map, or a flag I see? A certain word, “democracy”? What is America to me? The house I live in, a plot of earth, a street The grocer and the butcher, and the people that I meet The children in the playground, the faces that I see All races and religions, that’s America to me. The place I work in, the worker by my side The little town or city where my people lived and died The “howdy” and the handshake, the air of feeling free And the right to speak my mind out, that’s America to me The things I see about me, the big things and the small The little corner newsstand and the house a mile tall The wedding in the churchyard, the laughter and the tears The dream that’s been a-growin’ for a hundred and fifty years The town I live in, the Street, the house, the room The pavement of the city, or a garden all in bloom The church, the school, the clubhouse, the million lights I see But especially the people That’s America to me. At the time the first of these two ballads was written the country was on the brink of World War II and despite resistance from isolationists—the label given to those who wanted to keep us “free of foreign entanglements,” after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, almost all Americans rallied to the cause of uniting to “bury the Axis,” the three enemy nations: Japan, Germany, and Italy. (In keeping with the threat of causing the demise of those nations, many posters displayed gravestones with these iconic symbols: a rising sun, a swastika, and the bundled wooden rods or fasces with an axe head, the badge of Italian fascism with roots in Roman imperialism.)