Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters (3 page)

Have I told you that you are part of a family?

A man named Abraham Lincoln knew

that all of America should work together.

He kept our nation one

and promised freedom to enslaved sisters and brothers.

This man of the people, simple and plain,

asked more of our country—that we behave as kin.

Have I told you to be proud to be American?

Our first president, George Washington,

believed in liberty and justice for all.

His barefoot soldiers crossed wintry rivers, forging ever on.

He helped make an idea into a new country, strong and true,

a country of principles, a country of citizens.

Have I told you that America is made up of people of every kind?

People of all races, religions, and beliefs.

People from the coastlines and the mountains.

People who have made bright lights shine

by sharing their unique gifts

and giving us the courage to lift one another up,

to keep up the fight,

to work and build upon all that is good

in our nation.

Have I told you that they are all a part of you?

Have I told you that you are one of them,

and that you are the future?

And have I told you that I love you?

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE (1887–1986) is one of America’s best-known artists. Born in Wisconsin, she also lived in New York City; near Lake George, New York; and in New Mexico, and is most famous for her exquisite large paintings of flowers and bones that she saw in the Southwest.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (1897–1955) was born in Germany, immigrated to America in 1933, and became a U.S. citizen in 1940. A recipient of the Nobel Prize, this esteemed physicist and Princeton University professor is best known for his special theory of relativity, which made famous the equation E = mc
²
.

JACKIE ROBINSON (1919–1972) was born to a family of sharecroppers in Georgia. He excelled at athletics early on and in 1947 became the first African American to play major league baseball since the sport had become segregated in the nineteenth century. He was chosen as the National League’s most valuable player in 1949.

SITTING BULL (c. 1831–1890) was a Sioux leader who spoke out and led his people against many policies of the United States government. He is most famous for his stunning victory in 1876 over Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

BILLIE HOLIDAY (1915–1959) rose from a difficult childhood to become one of the defining singers of American popular music and jazz. Holiday is known for the rich emotion in her voice. Her most famous performances include “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “God Bless the Child,” “Summertime,” and “Stormy Weather.”

HELEN KELLER (1880–1968) became deaf and blind as a toddler and later achieved world renown as an author and activist. She received a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College and remained an unrelenting voice for the disabled and for many other causes throughout her life. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.

MAYA LIN (1959– ) is an artist and architect who is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. She won a nationwide competition to design the memorial at the age of twenty-one, when she was an undergraduate at Yale. The memorial includes a granite wall with the names of fallen and missing soldiers. Millions of people visit the memorial every year.

JANE ADDAMS (1860–1935) was a social reformer dedicated to helping children, eradicating poverty, and promoting peace. Hull House, the settlement house she founded in Chicago, was internationally recognized in its day for its work to house the poor. Jane Addams was the second woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. (1929–1968) was a Baptist minister in Atlanta and an icon of the civil rights movement. His inspiring leadership of the nonviolent movement for social change, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56 and the March on Washington in 1963, paved the way for the desegregation of America. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

NEIL ARMSTRONG (1930– ) was an aviator and astronaut who became the first person to walk on the moon, which he did on July 20, 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission. When he set foot on the lunar surface, he famously declared, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom that same year, along with fellow crewmember Buzz Aldrin.

CESAR CHAVEZ (1927–1993), a farmworker since childhood, was a major leader of the nonviolent movement for the rights and dignity of farmworkers, using techniques such as strikes, boycotts, and fasts to implement social change. He cofounded the National Farm Workers Association, which became United Farm Workers, and won many crucial labor reforms. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809–1865) was the sixteenth president of the United States. He held office during the Civil War, which broke out on the eve of his inauguration, and he saw the nation restored to unity in 1865. In 1863 he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederate states, and pressed for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States. He was a brilliant orator whose famous speeches include the Gettysburg Address in 1863, honoring fallen soldiers of the Civil War. Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth five days after the end of the war.

GEORGE WASHINGTON (1732–1799) was a gentleman farmer who became the commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, served as a delegate to and president of the Constitutional Convention, and ultimately was unanimously elected as the first president of the newly formed United States of America.