| [00:20.48] |
Was down in Mississippi not so long ago |
| [00:29.98] |
When a young boy from Chicago town |
| [00:34.56] |
Walked in a Southern door |
| [00:39.91] |
This boy's fateful tragedy |
| [00:43.51] |
You all should remember well |
| [00:48.40] |
The color of his skin was black |
| [00:53.04] |
And his name was Emmett Till |
| [01:00.13] |
Some men, they dragged him to a barn |
| [01:06.01] |
And there they beat him up |
| [01:09.30] |
They said they had a reason |
| [01:13.94] |
But I just can't remember what |
| [01:18.38] |
They tortured him and did some things |
| [01:23.66] |
Too evil to repeat |
| [01:27.65] |
There were screaming sounds inside the barn |
| [01:32.32] |
There was laughing sounds out on the street |
| [01:38.16] |
Then they rolled his body down a gulf |
| [01:42.69] |
Amidst a blood red rain |
| [01:47.13] |
And they threw him in the waters wide |
| [01:51.90] |
To cease his screaming pain |
| [01:56.34] |
The reason that they killed him there |
| [02:00.93] |
And I'm a-sure, it was no lie |
| [02:05.37] |
Was just for they found them killing him |
| [02:10.22] |
And to watch him slowly die |
| [02:15.35] |
And then to stop the United States |
| [02:19.15] |
Of yelling for a trial |
| [02:23.53] |
Two brothers, they confessed |
| [02:26.69] |
That they had killed poor Emmett Till |
| [02:32.32] |
But on the jury there were men |
| [02:36.90] |
Who had helped the brothers commit this awful crime |
| [02:41.49] |
And so this trial was a mockery |
| [02:46.13] |
But nobody there seemed to mind |
| [02:51.67] |
I saw the morning papers |
| [02:57.50] |
But I could not bear |
| [03:01.00] |
To see the smiling brothers |
| [03:05.38] |
Walkin' down the courthouse stairs |
| [03:09.97] |
For the jury found them innocent |
| [03:14.49] |
And the brothers, they went free |
| [03:18.93] |
While Emmett's body floats the foam |
| [03:23.51] |
Of a Jim Crow southern sea |
| [03:30.19] |
If you can't speak out against this kind of thing |
| [03:34.98] |
A crime that's so unjust |
| [03:39.73] |
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt |
| [03:44.11] |
Your ears must be filled with dust |
| [03:48.90] |
Your arms and legs |
| [03:50.50] |
They must be in shackles and chains |
| [03:53.13] |
And your blood, it must cease to flow |
| [03:57.64] |
For you to let this human race |
| [04:02.59] |
Fall down so God-awful low |
| [04:07.33] |
This song is just a reminder |
| [04:11.82] |
To remind your fellow man |
| [04:16.26] |
That this kind of thing still lives today |
| [04:20.90] |
In that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan |
| [04:25.24] |
But if all of us folks that thinks alike |
| [04:29.72] |
If we give all we could give |
| [04:34.51] |
We could make this great land of ours |
| [04:38.95] |
A greater place to live |
