The Death Of Emmett Till

Lyrics

It was down in Mississippi a few short years ago When a young man from a Chicago town stepped through a southern door Now this man's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well For the colour of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till Some men, they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up They said that they had a reason but I can't remember what They tortured him and did some things too evil to read There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing on the street And thеy rolled his body down a gulf of blood red rain And they thrеw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain The reason that they killed him there, I'm sure it ain't no lie Was just for the fun of killing him and to watch him slowly die And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial The two brothers, they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till But on the jury were the men who helped commit this crime And so this trial was a mockery that no one seemed to mind I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see The smiling brothers walking down the courthouse stairs For the jury found them innocent and the brothers, they went free While Emmett's body floats the foam of the Jim Crow southern sea If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, it's a crime that's so unjust Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt and your mind is filled with dust Your arms and legs must be shackled and chained and your blood refused to flow For if you let this human race fall down so God awful low This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man That this kind of thing still lives today in the ghost robed Ku Klux Klan But if all of us folks think alike, if we gave all we could give We could make this world of ours a greater place to live This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man