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Was down in Mississippi not so long ago |
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When a young boy from Chicago town |
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Walked in a Southern door |
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This boy's fateful tragedy |
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You all should remember well |
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The color of his skin was black |
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And his name was Emmett Till |
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Some men, they dragged him to a barn |
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And there they beat him up |
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They said they had a reason |
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But I just can't remember what |
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They tortured him and did some things |
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Too evil to repeat |
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There were screaming sounds inside the barn |
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There was laughing sounds out on the street |
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Then they rolled his body down a gulf |
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Amidst a blood red rain |
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And they threw him in the waters wide |
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To cease his screaming pain |
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The reason that they killed him there |
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And I'm a-sure, it was no lie |
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Was just for they found them killing him |
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And to watch him slowly die |
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And then to stop the United States |
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Of yelling for a trial |
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Two brothers, they confessed |
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That they had killed poor Emmett Till |
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But on the jury there were men |
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Who had helped the brothers commit this awful crime |
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And so this trial was a mockery |
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But nobody there seemed to mind |
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I saw the morning papers |
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But I could not bear |
| [03:01.00] |
To see the smiling brothers |
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Walkin' down the courthouse stairs |
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For the jury found them innocent |
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And the brothers, they went free |
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While Emmett's body floats the foam |
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Of a Jim Crow southern sea |
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If you can't speak out against this kind of thing |
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A crime that's so unjust |
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Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt |
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Your ears must be filled with dust |
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Your arms and legs |
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They must be in shackles and chains |
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And your blood, it must cease to flow |
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For you to let this human race |
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Fall down so God-awful low |
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This song is just a reminder |
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To remind your fellow man |
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That this kind of thing still lives today |
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In that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan |
| [04:25.24] |
But if all of us folks that thinks alike |
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If we give all we could give |
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We could make this great land of ours |
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A greater place to live |