The Death of Emmett Till

The Death Of Emmett Till (Live) - Bob Dylan

'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 disremember what

They tortured him and

Did some evil things too evil to

Repeat

There was screaming sounds inside the barn

There was laughing sounds out on the street

Then they rolled his body

Down a gulf amidst a blood-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

He was a black-skinned boy so

He was born to 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

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 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