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Teach Your Students Well: This Land Is Their Land, Dave Powell

Education Faculty Publications

Most people know Woody Guthrie as the author of the song that's often called our second national anthem, "This Land Is Your Land." Not everyone knows that it's a protest song. In the winter of 1940, Guthrie was hitchhiking his way east to New York City at the invitation of Will Geer, an actor best known later in his life for playing Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton on the show "The Waltons." At the time, Geer was a stage actor and political activist who saw something in Woody Guthrie that he wanted to share with the rest of the world. Guthrie, …