The Death of Emmett Till lyrics

'Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago

When a young boy from Chicago town walked through a Southern door

This boy’s dreadful tragedy you should all 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 disremember 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 bloodred 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 slowly watch him 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 seemed to mind

I saw the morning papers but I could not bear

To see the 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, and 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 give all we could give

We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live

• Artist:Bob Dylan
• Album:The Bootleg Series, Vol 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (2010)