It was 1938, and Kate Smith was in the market for a new brand.

She was several years into her singing career — a career that would span five decades and earn her a Presidential Medal of Freedom — and Smith’s manager, Ted Collins, wanted to change up her image. She was going to be wholesome, the girl next door. All-American.

So when they approached the composer Irving Berlin, in need of a new patriotic gem for Smith to perform on Armistice Day (now Veterans Day) in 1938, he had just the thing: an old tune, written and stashed away during his Army days 20 years earlier.

“God Bless America” would become a sensation, and so would Smith. But this April, the song would become tarnished by its association with the performer who made it famous, when information surfaced that Smith had performed racist songs in the years before “God Bless America.” Two sports teams that regularly played her rendition, the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Flyers, dropped the Kate Smith version from their playlists.
Early on, it was a lofty monument of patriotism as the United States climbed out of the Depression and then lurched into war. Seventy years later, it became a symbol of unity after the Sept. 11 attacks. Along the way, it has been performed by countless vocalists, bands and classrooms of schoolchildren, and spun off millions in royalties for two of Berlin’s favorite organizations, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

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Then, as now, some listeners found the song jingoistic. Woody Guthrie is said to have written his earthy standard “This Land Is Your Land” as a protest after growing tired of repeatedly hearing Smith singing Berlin’s song. (Guthrie’s original title was “God Blessed America for Me.”)

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Through it all, Kate Smith’s voice remained a fixture at Yankee Stadium. Then, this year, a fan sent an email to the Yankees flagging the racist songs Ms. Smith had recorded, with titles like “Pickaninny Heaven” and “That’s Why Darkies Were Born.”

In the early years of Smith’s career on the vaudeville circuit, songs like these — with titles and lyrics depicting painful, demeaning stereotypes of black people — were part of mainstream popular music, Kaskowitz said. And in vaudeville, she added, the performers who were prescribed the role of singing these songs were generally larger white women like Smith.