[1] A similar poem was written in the early 1940s by Reverend William Holmes Borders, Sr., senior pastor at the Greater Wheat Street Baptist Church and civil rights activist in Atlanta, Georgia.
[citation needed] It was geared to fulfilling Sesame Street’s initial curriculum for serving under-privileged city children, as well as promoting cultural understanding.
[4] It also appears in When We Were Kings, a 1996 documentary examining the historic 1974 Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which was still known as Zaire at that time).
About a month after Dr. Seuss died in 1991, Saturday Night Live paid tribute to the book Green Eggs and Ham, by having Jackson appear on the "Weekend Update" segment and recite it in the same oratative fashion he performs the poem.
"I Am – Somebody" also inspired[citation needed] a similarly titled song on Carlos Santana's 2005 album, "All That I Am", which featured the American rapper will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas.