Death Of Emmett Till Songtext / Lyric

'Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago

When a young boy from Chicago town

Stepped through a Southern door



This boy's dreadful tragedy

I can still remember well

The color 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 they had a reason

But I can't remember what



They tortured him and did some things

Too evil to repeat

There were screaming sounds inside the barn

There was laughing sounds out on the street



Then they rolled his body down a gulf

Amidst a bloody red rain

And they threw him in the waters wide

To cease his screaming pain






The reason that they killed him there

And I'm sure, it ain't no lie

Was just for the fun of killin' him

And to watch him slowly die



And then to stop the United States

Of yelling for a trial

Two brothers, they confessed

That they had killed poor Emmett Till



But on the jury there were men

Who helped the brothers commit this awful crime

And so this trial was a mockery

But nobody there seemed to mind



I saw the morning papers

But I could not bear to see

To see smiling brothers

Walkin' down the courthouse stairs



For the jury found them innocent

And the brothers, they went free

While Emmett's body floats the foam

Of a Jim Crow southern sea



If you can't speak out against this kind of thing

A crime that's so unjust

Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt

Your mind is filled with dust



Your arms and legs

They must be in shackles and chains

And your blood, it must refuse to flow

For 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 that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan



But if all of us folks that thinks alike

If we gave all we could give

We could make this great land of ours

A greater place to live