God Bless America Guthrie criticized the song, and in 1940 he wrote "This Land Is Your Land," originally titled "God Blessed America For Me," as a response. Anti-Semitic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan also protested against the song due to its authorship by a Jewish immigrant. In 1943, Smith's rendition was featured in the patriotic musical "This is the Army" along with other Berlin songs. The manuscripts in the Library of Congress reveal the evolution of the song from victory to peace. Berlin gave the royalties of the song to The God Bless America Fund for redistribution to Boy Scouts and
Song to Woody 2017. The book weaves a tale connecting "Song to Woody", "1913 Massacre", the lives of Dylan and Guthrie, American labor history and more. A live version of "Song to Woody" was recorded at Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, Calif., on 16 March 2000 and released on the "Things Have Changed" CD single in 2000. David Bowie refers to the song in his tribute to Dylan, "Song for Bob Dylan", which begins with the line, "Now hear this, Robert Zimmerman, I wrote this song for you" mirroring Dylan's own "Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song." The song