This Is Our Dream
Wed., January 17, 09:10 AM
Each year on Martin Luther King's birthday, our local radio station plays the “I have a dream” speech in its entirety. Each year I try to listen to the whole thing because I always seem to hear something I didn't hear before.
This year the recording was followed by Sinatra's "The House I Live In." It's another one of those songs I really love.
This song has some interesting history of its own. It was written during World War II and was used in a short subject film about intolerance. The film was awarded an Academy Award. By the time I started Sunday school, it was available in libraries and was often shown to our students because it defended a Jewish kid against a gang of ignorant bullies.
The lyrics were written by Abel Meeropol, who published it under the pen name Lewis Allan. Meeropol was an outspoken liberal, who was generally was considered a "suspicious individual" by the U.S. government. He tried to live up to what he believed; when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage, he and his wife adopted the Rosenberg children.
Meeropol loved the constitutional rights and freedoms that America was based on, but he hated the way people of other races, religions, and political views were often treated. His idealistic lyrics do not reflect the way he thought America was, but why it was worth fighting for. (The Pledge of Allegiance is another example of idealism, as opposed to the way things really are.)
It's a rather long song, but its worth looking at.
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,
Or 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 and the churchyard,
The laughter and the tears,
And the dream that's been a growing
For a hundred-fifty years.
The town I live in,
The street, the house, the room,
The pavement of the city,
And the garden all in bloom;
The church, the school, the clubhouse,
The million lights I see,
But especially the people;
That's America to me.
There are additional, more detailed verses on the internet; these are from the Sinatra recording. We're not there yet, but we can hope.
