My Country, 'Tis of Thee

The story

"My Country, 'Tis of Thee", also called "America", was written in 1831 by Samuel Francis Smith while he was a student at the Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts. The composer Lowell Mason had asked him to translate, or write new words for, a collection of German songs, one of which was set to the melody of "God Save the King", the de facto national anthem of the United Kingdom. Smith gave Mason the words he had written to that tune. They were first sung in public on 4 July 1831, at a children's Independence Day celebration at Park Street Church in Boston, and first printed in 1832. Setting new words to the British royal anthem was a contrafactum: the tune that stood for the British monarchy was made to speak for American democracy.

Through the 19th century and the early 20th the song was one of the de facto national anthems of the United States, along with songs such as "Hail, Columbia", until "The Star-Spangled Banner" was adopted as the official national anthem in 1931. Other words were set to it as well: an abolitionist version by A. G. Duncan in 1843 named both white and black people, and a further verse was added to the original for Washington's centennial celebration. Charles Ives wrote organ variations on it, Variations on "America".

Some of its best-known performances belong to the struggle for civil rights. On Easter Sunday, 9 April 1939, the African American contralto Marian Anderson sang it at the Lincoln Memorial: she had been barred from singing at the DAR Constitution Hall under its whites-only policy, and after a national outcry, and with the support of Eleanor Roosevelt, the concert was held on the memorial's steps before more than 75,000 people and a radio audience of millions. On 28 August 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. recited its first verse near the end of his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Aretha Franklin sang it at Barack Obama's first inauguration on 20 January 2009, and Kelly Clarkson at his second.

What it says

A patriotic hymn of love for the singer's country. Set to the British royal anthem, it turns a song for a king into a song for a free people and its liberty; its mood is solemn and devoted.

The words