Song Synopsis: Jeffrey, a high school history teacher introduces the practice of Redlining to his students by telling the story of how the GI Bill did not serve his grandfather when he tried to buy a home in a New York suburb after WW ll.

AMERICA THANKS YOU

By Nicole Alifante, Miles East and Stephanie Stowe

Performed by Russell Jordan and Amber

Jeffrey speaks: I want you to imagine that it is June of 1947. You’re a young black man, a decorated veteran of World War II. You’ve served America well. Your battalion survived the meanest winter in Western Europe and the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. You’ve helped defeat a fascist and ended a genocide. In Europe, you are seen as a hero, an ally. Not some lesser part of this victory, but as an equal.

Chorus:

America, America Thanks You!

Jeffrey speaks: You will sail back across an ocean you crossed two years before. But when you return to the nation of your birth, (sung: Nation of Your Birth) and salute the flag you fought under, you will find that your service is considered lesser, your part in history, diminished.

Chorus:

America, America Thanks You!

Jeffrey Speaks: Because you are young, you carry hope in your heart. You will marry your sweetheart and enroll in college. You dream of becoming an engineer. (sung: You Dream) In your mind you build expansive new bridges and highways. Imagine bold new ways to move people forward, faster...safer.

Bridge

Across America, houses are being built at a feverish rate. New communities skirting cities. You see photographs of the flat green lawns and wide streets where you imagine one day parking the Chevrolet you plan on buying. The one you picture yourself driving, over a bridge of your own design, to a home in these new "suburbs". (Suburbs! Suburbs! Suburbs!)

Chorus:

America, America Thanks You!

Jeffrey: As a returning GI you were promised that your service would be rewarded, with affordable mortgages, low interest loans for new businesses, (Sung: You Were Promised) and opportunities to pursue a professional career. But all of that, you will soon learn, was never meant for you.

(sung) God Bless America……

Jeffrey: Your application on a pretty house on Long Island is delayed once, and then a second time. The third application will go missing, and when it’s finally located, the home you and your wife had chosen, will have already been sold to a young white man, also a GI, for his young family.

Bridge

You will return to your old neighborhood, telling your wife that it’s better this way; to live among your own. Good jobs are hard to find, so take work as a janitor at a local high school. It will be temporary, you promise your wife. You are tired of fighting. (Fighting, Fighting, Fighting!)

Chorus:

America, America Thanks You!

Jeffrey: Years later, as you work alone, emptying trash cans and mopping up classrooms, the future you were promised and fought for will feel like a distant dream.

Chorus:

America, America Thanks You!

Jeffrey: The soaring bridges you designed in your imagination will have long disappeared. Sunk deep beneath an endless ocean, much like the one you crossed decades before, when you were young, and still believed that change was possible. Soon, it will feel like you never left. And that, is the story of my grandfather, Jeffrey Simon Gaines.

(A school bell rings.)