This land Is Your Land — or is it?

Woody Guthrie at 100: American struggles and dreams

By Joe Heim, WashPost, Published: July 9

It’s not widely known that Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” — a song written in 1940 that would later become a grade-school classic — was written as a rejoinder to another American standard, Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” a song that gained currency in pre-World War II America.

Guthrie, who would have turned 100 this week, felt Berlin’s song was overly patriotic and didn’t address the struggles and dreams of the ordinary Americans he knew, says Jeff Place, archivist for the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. And so Guthrie penned “This Land” (originally titled “God Blessed America”) as a retort that emphasized the country’s shared resources and egalitarianism, and included verses such as this that would cheer populists (not to mention today’s Occupy movement):

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

(More here.)