The Death of Emmett Till Songtext
von Bob Dylan

That was his first mistake (yeah)

′Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago
When a young boy from Chicago town
Walked in 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 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
'Cause he was born a black-skinned boy, 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 had 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 bodies float 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 clay
And your ears must be filled with dust
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains
And your mind it must cease to flow
For you let our 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


You like that one?
This is one of the greatest contemporary ballads I′ve ever heard
Tremendous
Do you think so?
Oh yes
Thanks

Got some lines in it that just make you stop breathing
It's great
Have you sung that for Woodie Guthie?
No, I′m gonna sing that for him
Gonna sing it (yeah) oh yeah
I just wrote that one about last week I think
A fine song, makes me very proud

Uh, it's, what's so magnificent about it to me
Is that it doesn′t have any sense of being written
You know it sounds as if it, it just came out
It doesn′t have any of those little poetic contortions
That mess up so many contemporary ballads, you know (oh yeah)

Then of course you sing it so straight
That's fine
Raymond Chandler has the melody though
He′d probably be very pleased with what you did to it
What song does he sing to it?

He sings another one he wrote
He wrote about some bus driver out in Colorado
Crashed a schoolbus with twenty-seven kids
That's a good one too, that′s a good song

What other songs you gonna sing?
Wanna hear another one?
I wanna hear tonnes
Okay, yeah I'm gonna sing you
I never get a chance to sing alone
Let me just sing you a plain ordinary one (fine)
I′ve tuned this one, this is is open E
Ooh I get one, I get two