Editing God Bless America (section)

==History==
[[Irving Berlin]] wrote the song while serving in the U.S. Army at [[Camp Upton]] in [[Yaphank, New York]] at the end of [[World War I]], but decided that it did not fit in a [[revue]] called ''[[Yip Yip Yaphank]]'', so he set it aside.<ref>*Collins, Ace. ''Songs Sung, Red, White, and Blue: The Stories Behind America's Best-Loved Patriotic Songs''.  HarperResource, 2003, p. 82-83.</ref> The lyrics at that time included the line "Make her victorious on land and foam, God bless America..."<ref name="loc.gov"/> as well as "Stand beside her and guide her ''to the right'' with the light from above".<ref name=NPR>[https://www.npr.org/2013/09/02/216877219/from-peace-to-patriotism-the-shifting-identity-of-god-bless-america "From Peace To Patriotism: The Shifting Identity Of 'God Bless America'"].  Interview of Sheryl Kaskowitz by Robert Siegel. [[NPR]]. September 2, 2013. Retrieved September 10, 2013.</ref>

Music critic [[Jody Rosen]] says that a 1906 Jewish dialect novelty song, "When Mose with His Nose Leads the Band," contains a six-note fragment that is "instantly recognizable as the opening strains of 'God Bless America'". He interprets this as an example of Berlin's "habit of [[Interpolation (popular music)|interpolating]] bits of half-remembered songs into his own numbers."<ref>{{cite web|last=Rosen|first=Jody|url=http://idelsohnsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/jewface_booklet.pdf|title=Jewface|publisher=Reboot Stereophonic|date=June 2006}}</ref> Berlin, born Israel Baline, had himself written several Jewish-themed novelty tunes.<ref>{{cite book|first=Michael|last=Alexander|title=Jazz Age Jews|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4pR5SQPEYfMC|year=2003|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-11653-2|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=4pR5SQPEYfMC&pg=PA161 161]}}</ref>

[[File:Kate Smith.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Kate Smith]], 1930s]]
In 1938, with the rise of [[Adolf Hitler]], Berlin, who was [[Jew]]ish and had arrived in the U.S. from Russia at the age of five, felt it was time to revive it as a "peace song", and it was introduced on an [[Armistice Day]] broadcast in 1938, sung by [[Kate Smith]] on her radio show.<ref name="FHist">[http://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/kate.cgi "Flyers History - Kate Smith"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190420014311/https://www.flyershistory.com/cgi-bin/kate.cgi |date=April 20, 2019 }}  FlyersHistory.com. Accessed in 2007.</ref> This song has become the performer's calling card. Berlin had made some minor changes; by this time, "to the right" might have been considered a call to the political right, so he substituted "through the night" instead. He also provided an introduction that is now rarely heard but which Smith always used: "While the storm clouds gather far across the sea / Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free / Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, / As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer."  (In her first broadcast of the song, Kate Smith sang "that we're far from there" rather than "for a land so fair".)<ref name=NPR/>  This was changed when Berlin published the sheet music in March 1939.<ref name=NPR/>

[[Woody Guthrie]] criticized the song, and in 1940 he wrote "[[This Land Is Your Land]]," originally titled "God Blessed America For Me," as a response.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2000/07/03/1076186/this-land-is-your-land|title=The Story Of Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land'|last=Spitzer|first=Nick|date=February 15, 2012|website=NPR|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171205043641/https://www.npr.org/2000/07/03/1076186/this-land-is-your-land|archive-date=December 5, 2017|url-status=live|access-date=December 12, 2017}}</ref> [[Antisemitism|Anti-Semitic]] groups such as the [[Ku Klux Klan]] also protested against the song due to its authorship by a Jewish immigrant.<ref name=NPR/>

In 1943, Smith's rendition was featured in the patriotic musical film ''[[This is the Army]]'' along with other Berlin songs. The manuscripts in the Library of Congress reveal the evolution of the song from victory to peace. Berlin gave the royalties of the song to The God Bless America Fund for redistribution to [[Boy Scouts of America|Boy Scouts]] and [[Girl Scouts of the USA|Girl Scouts]] in New York City.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Wendell|first1=Bryan|title=How the BSA benefits every time you hear 'God Bless America'|url=http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2016/02/03/how-the-bsa-benefits-every-time-you-hear-god-bless-america/|work=Bryan on Scouting|access-date=February 3, 2016|date=February 3, 2016}}</ref> Smith performed the song on her two [[NBC]] television series in the 1950s.<ref name=totalt/> "God Bless America" also spawned another of Irving Berlin's tunes, "Heaven Watch The Philippines," during the end of [[World War II]]. The [[Philippines]] was an American possession since 1898 and recently liberated from [[Japanese occupation of the Philippines|Japanese occupation]]; Berlin wrote it after he heard Filipinos singing a modified version of the song replacing "America" with "The Philippines."

The song was used early in the [[Civil Rights Movement]] as well as at labor rallies.<ref name=NPR/> During the [[Counterculture of the 1960s|1960s counterculture]], the song was increasingly used by Christian conservatives in the US to signal their opposition to [[secular liberalism]] and to silence dissenters who were speaking in favor of communism or in [[opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War]].<ref name=Kaskowitz/>

Later, from December 11, 1969,<ref name=FHist/> through the early 1970s, the playing of Smith singing the song before many home games of the [[National Hockey League]]'s [[Philadelphia Flyers]] brought it renewed popularity as well as a reputation for being a "good luck charm" to the Flyers<ref name=FHist/> long before it became a staple of nationwide sporting events.<ref name=FHist/> The Flyers brought Smith in to perform live before Game 6 of the [[1974 Stanley Cup Finals]] on May 19, 1974, and the Flyers won the Cup that day.<ref name=FHist/><ref name=totalt>{{cite book |first=Alex |last=McNeil |title=Total Television |location=New York |publisher=Penguin Books |edition=4th |year=1996 |pages=446–447}}</ref>