[00:01.512][Verse 1]
[00:08.761]'Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago
[00:22.263]When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door
[00:31.270]This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well
[00:40.011]The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till
[00:48.768][Verse 2]
[00:50.275]Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up
[00:57.776]They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what
[01:06.271]They tortured him and did some things too evil to repeat
[01:14.961]There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street
[01:24.198][Verse 3]
[01:25.698]Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
[01:33.704]And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain
[01:42.447]The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie
[01:50.948]Was just for the fun of killing' him and to watch him slowly die
[01:59.948][Verse 4]
[02:00.955]And then to stop, the United States of yelling for a trial
[02:08.448]Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till
[02:17.199]But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime
[02:25.947]And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody there seemed to mind
[02:34.952][Verse 5]
[02:36.452]I saw the morning papers but I could not bear, to see
[02:43.948]The smiling brothers walking' down the courthouse stairs
[02:52.457]For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free
[03:00.947]While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea
[03:10.948][Verse 6]
[03:11.702]If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust
[03:18.961]Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust
[03:27.203]Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow
[03:36.197]For you to let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
[03:44.698][Verse 7]
[03:45.706]This song's just a reminder to remind your fellow man
[03:52.955]That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan
[04:01.699]But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give
[04:10.197]We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live