Katharine Lee Bates documentary to be screened in Colorado | Arts & Entertainment
Katharine Lee Bates spent the summer of 1893 in Colorado Springs and wrote a poem the whole country now knows how to sing.
A new documentary, “From Sea to Shining Sea: Katharine Lee Bates and the Story of ‘America the Beautiful’,” chronicles Bates’ life as an author, poet and professor; her brief, yet valuable stint in the Springs; and her poem turned song, “America the Beautiful,” which runs a close second to our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The film will be screened for free Tuesday at Cornerstone Arts Center at Colorado College. Writer and director John de Graaf and Leah Davis Witherow, curator of history at Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, who’s in the movie, will do a Q&A afterward.
“There’s much more to the song than most people think,” de Graaf said. “There are other verses people don’t know that are much more critical and asking the country to be all it can be. I got interested in the story of the woman who wrote the song and found she’s a fascinating character. Her life and work reflects important time periods in American history, particularly the Gilded Age, which she criticizes in the second paragraph of the song.”
Bates traveled by rail to the Springs from Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass., where she was an English professor. She’d been invited by CC to teach a summer course on Chaucer, among other elite teachers from around the U.S. While here, she and her cohort also took part in a robust social calendar, including traipsing through Garden of the Gods and attending a dinner and dance at the Antlers Hotel. Also on the docket was a trip up Pikes Peak. The train up the mountain wasn’t operating that day, though, so the group climbed aboard a spring wagon pulled by horses and made their way to the top. Their stay atop the famous peak was short-lived, however, as one of Bates’ colleagues had altitude sickness.
But it was time enough for Bates to gaze out across the land and take some notes. She later added to those notes and created the poem that was eventually published in 1895 in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal. By 1900, about 75 melodies had been written for the poem, but it was organist and choir director Samuel Augustus Ward’s 1882 tune that we all know today.
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“She’s a layered, intellectual thinker who’s advocating for change and for the promise of America to be available to everyone,” Witherow said of Bates. “She was a woman who lived her values and her ideals and used her voice, her poems, her book as a pulpit to encourage change.”
While we’re most familiar with the first verse of Bates’ poem, there are others to be sifted through and analyzed. In them is a call to action and advocacy, Witherow says.
“Even though her time in Colorado Springs was brief, her impact is enormous here and on a national level,” she said.
“She’s asking us to think about what our democratic ideals really mean. She’s also a peace advocate. This song helped galvanize and provide hope to World War I soldiers on the front.”
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Bates amended her poem several times throughout the years, strengthening her message to encourage America to be the very best it could be. She advocated for the working poor, immigrants and farmers, believing everyone could share in the wealth and promise of the U.S.
“Isn’t it wonderful we can reexamine women’s stories? We can continue to analyze and examine and reflect on how Katharine speaks to us in 2025. That’s the power of the documentary,” Witherow said. “She remains relevant to each new generation because her words continue to challenge us to live up to our highest ideals as a nation.”
Contact the writer: 636-0270
Contact the writer: 636-0270
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