America The Beautiful
https://www.weatherbug.com/news/On-This-Day-America-The-Beautiful-Was-Written
Over 120 years ago today, a song still widely sung across the U.S. and a household and nationwide staple, was written. It is known to captures the beauty of America.
“America The Beautiful” was first written by Katherine Lee Bates on July 22, 1893. Bates’s vision for the song was to capture the beauty of America and glorify the freedoms that the country has to offer. During that time, Bates was a college professor teaching at Wellesley College. Her inspiration for the song stemmed from a job she took over the summer to teach at Colorado College. This opportunity would lead her to admire the beautiful sights of Chicago, the Great Plains and other sites across the U.S..
The famous song would start out as a poem before having music composed by Silas Pratt. Pratt composed the music to the song after the poem was published in The Congregationalist. This song picked up much attention by the early 1900s with over 70 known melodies. However, the most famous rendition of the song was when Samuel A. Ward, an organist and song composer from Grace Church in Newark, N.J., collaborated with Bates.
Sadly, Ward would die before the song’s publishing as “America The Beautiful” in 1910. Bates and Ward’s combination would continue to reach further elation, especially during the Kennedy Administration in the 1960s. Debate for this song replacing “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem continues since it is so widely loved among Americans. As of right now there are no plans to move to this song as the national anthem, but it continues to be held in high esteem across the country.