The Death of Emmett Till (MacKenzie Tapes) Songtext
von Bob Dylan

It was 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 killing 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 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, 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 to let this human race fall down so God-awful low!

This song's 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′d make this great land of ours a greater place to live