Let the World See (2022) s01e02 Episode Script

1
'Twas down in Mississippi ♪
Not so long ago ♪
When a young boy from Chicago town ♪
Stepped through a Southern door ♪
This boy's fateful tragedy ♪
I can still remember well ♪
The color of his skin was black ♪
And his name was Emmett Till ♪
(train horn blows)
AMOS SMITH: The night they brought
Emmett's body back from Mississippi,
everybody came out to the house.
It was late.
Me and my sister were both in bed,
but there was a commotion outside,
and we wondered
what the heck was going on.
So me and my sister
crept out through our room,
went to the top of the stairs.
Uncle Hosey was down there,
and he was talking.
(sniffles)
(cries)
I never heard his voice
sound like that before.
We knew something terrible had happened.
We just couldn't understand what it was.
We crept back into the bedroom,
and we didn't go to sleep,
but we did go back to bed.
We kind of talked to say,
"Bobo's not coming back.
Bobo's dead."
We knew that.
(indistinct chanting, shouting)
When George Floyd's daughter said,
"My daddy changed the world,"
it all came back.
It was about the same feeling
I had that night
I listened at the top of the stairs,
and I had to leave the room.
Daddy changed the world.
SMITH: Your daddy did change the world.
You don't know how much your dad
changed the world.
OLLIE GORDON: I don't really talk
about it a lot,
'cause because I do cry.
'Cause I don't believe
that I had ever seen any grief
or any suffering in my family
that we had to experience
during that time.
So it took a very strong woman
to be able to rise up to that occasion
and to go and receive the body
at Rayner's Funeral Home.
JOHNNY THOMAS: Mrs. Till said
that she had to do
what she called a personal autopsy.
She had to see every inch
of the child's body.
She started at his ankles
and went to his midsection,
his face where he had a perfect nose,
hazel green eyes, beautiful teeth.
GORDON: She took much pride
in Emmett's teeth
'cause she said his teeth was perfect.
They were all knocked out.
THOMAS: And she said,
"Look like they took a hatchet
and just shaved
the front of his face off."
GORDON: As I hear, he had a hole in his
from one side of the head to the other.
THOMAS: And she could see clean through
to the other side of his head.
GORDON: She goes, "Well, my God,
they had shot him.
Did they have to do
Did they have to torture him this way?
This-this-this-this monster,
this is what they have done to my child."
When Mr. Rayner asked me,
he said, "Mrs. Mobley,
that's the undertaker.
Do you want me to retouch the body?"
I said, "No, Mr. Rayner,
let the people see what I have seen.
I want the world to see
what is going on in Mississippi
in this great old
United States of America."
ANGIE THOMAS: Hundreds, if not thousands,
of people showed up for the funeral.
And not only to show support to her,
but to see Emmett,
and to pay respect to him,
and to see what had happened to him.
Deciding to have not just
an open casket funeral
but a public open casket funeral,
she was making a statement.
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: Mamie Till-Mobley
understood
if people see what happened
to that poor boy,
they will see the depth of barbarity.
KHALIL MUHAMMAD: To honor
Mamie Till-Mobley's wishes
that the world would see
what happened to her son,
A.A. Rayner, as a mortician, took risks
by choosing to break the seal,
which meant that he was breaking
a contract with the state of Mississippi
and going against the policies
that he was meant to supposed to follow
by putting a glass encasing over
so that the body would be
properly respected and preserved,
but nevertheless viewed,
and by hanging photographs
within the casket itself.
I mean, there are burial rituals
that were modified in this moment
for a very political purpose.
THELMA WRIGHT: I was at the funeral,
but I wasn't myself.
I was in a state of shock.
REV. WHEELER PARKER: All I can remember
is kind of being numb,
and I had no remorse,
no sadness, no sorrow,
because we believed that
we could see each other again.
I said, "That is not Emmett."
I was in a state of shock.
I said, "I'm gonna see him again."
His body was so defaced,
it was transformative in its power.
People who saw his body
came out different than when they went in.
And it can be argued that really,
the modern civil rights movement
began with an open casket of a disfigured,
brutally beaten boy laying down.
MAMIE TILL-MOBLEY: I understood now
that this was about more than Emmett.
People had to face my son
and realize just how twisted,
how distorted, how terrifying
race hatred could be.
They would have to see
their own responsibility
and pushing for an end to this evil.
CHRIS BENSON: Simeon Booker,
who was quite an extraordinary journalist,
was able to convince Mamie to have
Emmett's remains photographed.
And he brought in David Jackson,
a Jet magazine photographer,
to photograph Emmett.
And that's the record that was
produced of Emmett's condition
when he was returned.
ANGIE THOMAS: She did more than just show
what happened to Emmett.
She put a visualization to lynching.
JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN: I saw the picture
first in Jet magazine
and suddenly realized
that I was not immortal.
And he was exactly like me,
my age, my color.
So why couldn't something horrible
like that happen to me?
I couldn't believe a human body
had become that
and the hatred that caused that.
Me seeing that picture
of Emmett Till was the impetus
for me actually feeling like,
"You got to do something purposeful."
I, like every Black kid in the city
and probably in the nation,
learned about that story
as part of history.
But the realness of it was understood.
It was the story of what could
happen to a young Black man
caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time,
saying the wrong thing.
If they say a picture
is worth 1,000 words,
an image like that
is worth a million lives.
To see what the disfiguring consequence
of white supremacy can do.
But neither a Mamie Till-Mobley
or anybody else
could ever imagine
the outsized implications
of how it would transform America.
MOBLEY: On Tuesday, September 6th,
the day we buried Emmett
at Burr Oak Cemetery,
the Tallahatchie Grand Jury
sitting in Sumner, Mississippi,
indicted Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam
for Emmett's murder.
I told reporters that I was ready
to give my life
to make sure that what
had happened to Emmett
would never happen to anyone else.
I meant those words.
BENSON: Mamie had to brave
the racial hostility
that she knew she was gonna face
in Mississippi
to go down to tell the truth,
to go down to seek justice in this case.
DYSON: As I was driving here
to Mississippi today
I thought about
"Who paved this road?"
Not physically,
but who paved it with their courage
and insight and commitment?
Mamie Till-Mobley was one of them.
It's my opinion that the guilt
begins with Mrs. Bryant,
and I want to see Mrs. Bryant punished,
her husband,
and any other persons
that were in on this thing.
DYSON: Mamie Till-Mobley has to be,
basically smuggled into Mississippi
because if they find out
where she's going or who she is,
her life is at risk.
MOBLEY: Getting us there
was almost like traveling
the Underground Railroad in reverse,
with conductors and safe houses
along the way.
The word was that some
officials would pass along
license plate numbers
to Ku Klux Klan members
who would lay in wait
on dark, lonely roads.
She came down here knowing
that they were gonna get away with it.
She had to.
BETTY PEARSON: The two men
admitted kidnapping Emmett.
So they were already in jail
in Greenwood for the kidnapping.
But they said that when they
took Emmett to Bryant's wife,
she said he wasn't the boy
that had insulted her,
so they let him go,
and told him to go back home.
MOBLEY: I was ready to testify
that I knew my son,
that I had recognized him, identified him,
maybe even in Mississippi,
there would be 12 people
who would consider the
testimony of a grieving mother.
Every lawyer in this county,
from what I understand,
volunteered to defend Milam and Bryant.
PEARSON: All five lawyers joined together
to be the defense team
and two of them, especially,
were friends of ours,
and it just infuriated me, because to me,
that was saying to the whole world
that every white person,
at least in Sumner, was
was defending these two men
for this horrible crime.
I remember how there
were little jars in stores
where people could give put in money
for the Milam and Bryant Defense Fund.
PEARSON: I think that most people thought
that they had killed him.
I think most people thought
that they would not be convicted for it.
SMITH: My father was one
of the three lawyers that prosecuted
Mr. Milam and Mr. Bryant
for murdering Emmett Till.
I grew up in a little town
of Ripley, Mississippi.
I was seven years old,
and I remember my mother
being very, very scared
and uncertain about what was going on.
MOBLEY: They were going to turn
the murder of my son
into a case of self-defense.
Defense of the Mississippi way of life.
SMITH: It was all-white male jury
back in those days.
GLORIA J. BROWNE-MARSHALL: A jury
is made up of registered voters,
and Mississippi had gone
out of its way through violence
to remove all of the Black
registered voters.
So Black people
were kept out of the jury pools.
It was also understood
that an all-white male jury
had the social responsibility
to return a verdict
that would fall in line
with the mores of Southern life.
Most white men had white women
on a pedestal.
And that you must protect
white women from Black men.
It's an interesting way to think
about the competing agendas and roles
that these two women play in this trial.
The mother of Emmett Till,
the slain victim,
and Carolyn Bryant, the white woman
who is claiming victimhood.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: There is this
collision course
between where this country
is going and where it's been.
Is white supremacy going to be maintained?
Is the, the white woman
going to stay on her pedestal?
Is the Black person supposed to be
at the bottom and stay there?
All of these things are on trial.
PEARSON: I was determined to go
to the trial
and hear what was said.
I was 23 years old,
and it was my first assignment,
covering the Emmett Till murder trial
for The Nation magazine.
It got huge press coverage.
We had reporters all the way from London
and every newspaper in the United States.
WAKEFIELD: There was a crowd
around the courthouse
during the whole trial.
It was like a circus.
There were people selling lemonade,
and people were renting lawn chairs.
And as we were standing there,
a car parked,
and a lady and a gentleman got out.
She was very attractive, dressed well.
She walked up, getting ready to go,
and the reporter said,
"Are you Mamie Till?"
She said, "Yes, I am."
MOBLEY: It felt like
we had walked into hell.
There was no protection arranged for us.
I kept looking around
expecting to have somebody,
federal marshals, the FBI, anybody,
but we were on our own.
WAKEFIELD: Roy Bryant and Milam,
they were in court every day.
And they sat at the front,
and they chewed on cigars.
They were playing with their little boys
and laughing with their wives,
and you just felt like they felt very sure
that they would not be convicted.
ANNIE WRIGHT: Papa, Mose Wright, said,
"Hey, one thing I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna testify at the trial.
Whether I'll live, I don't know,
but I'm gonna talk."
BROWNE-MARSHALL: Simeon,
one of the cousins
who was actually in the bed
with Emmett when they took him,
he then, just like Reverend Mose,
can be a witness to what happened.
ANNIE WRIGHT: Simeon went every day
with Papa because they
he thought he would be called to testify.
And they kept him back
in the witness room,
but, you know, he could see the people.
And he saw how that
they had the Black press
and all that, they sitting over
on the side at a little card table.
The legacy of slavery
is everywhere in that courtroom.
The courtroom is segregated,
with Blacks on one side,
whites on the other.
PEARSON: Mose Wright
was the bravest Black man
I've ever known in my life,
to have testified as he did.
JOHNNY THOMAS: On August the 28th,
Mose said someone
came to his door knocking.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: He testified that
they got Emmett Till out of bed
at about 2:00 to 2:30 a.m.
THOMAS: They brought him out of the house
and asked someone, "Was that the boy?"
BROWNE-MARSHALL: Prosecutor asked,
"Was that a man's voice or a lady's voice
you heard in the car?"
Mose answers, "It seemed like it was
a lighter voice than a man's."
We don't know if it was
Carolyn Bryant in the truck.
It's been assumed over time
that it was Carolyn Bryant,
but then there are others who have assumed
that she stayed back at the store.
WAKEFIELD: And when he was asked,
could he identify the two men
who had come to his house
and taken Emmett Till away with them
PEARSON: He stood up
and almost stood on his tiptoes
and pointed at Milam
and said, "There he is,"
and then said, "Mr. Bryant was with him."
ANGIE THOMAS: It was taking a stand
as if to say,
"You killed my nephew,
but you're not gonna run me off."
That took guts. (chuckles)
THELMA WRIGHT: I see some
of the athletes,
they were put up their fist
and kneeled during
"The Star-Spangled Banner."
It's because of, I think,
what my father did.
His example is the example
of those who are not going to be silent,
those who know
that there is a price to pay.
PARKER: That day, my grandfather
had come home from trial
and he couldn't sleep.
He said he was restless,
and he got up and
went and slept in the cemetery.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: When Mamie T. Mobley
shows up in the courtroom,
the white photographers
and other reporters go crazy
trying to get pictures of her.
She is dignified. She's wearing black.
She carries herself upright.
MAN: What do you intend to do here today?
To answer any questions that might
that the attorneys might ask me to answer.
MAN 2: Do you have any evidence
bearing on this case?
I do know that this is my son.
She was just amazingly composed,
testifying at the courthouse,
and saying, "Yes, it was his body."
To speak eloquently
and to be elegantly composed,
to tell her truth, that was remarkable.
She was Black girl magic
and Black excellence rolled into one.
MUHAMMAD: The defense,
upon cross-examination,
asked, in a very aggressive line
of questioning,
whether she had
an insurance policy on Emmett Till,
had he ever been to a reform school,
had he ever had trouble with white people.
And it was a, by my reading,
a backhanded way of suggesting
that he might have been
a troublesome boy to begin with.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: She knew that justice
may not occur in that courtroom,
but she had to do her part,
and her part was to tell
not just about her son truthfully,
but also to face down Mississippi.
MAN: Gentlemen, will the
introduction of new testimony
from the so-called surprise witnesses,
will that definitely establish the time
and the place of the actual crime?
It won't establish the time
and place of the actual murder,
but it will connect the,
the defendants with the crime.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: There was
a search for witnesses.
DYSON: And they finally found
Willie Reed,
18 years old, and he had
the courage to go to that court
and to tell what he saw.
MOBLEY: He spoke softly.
So softly the judge had to ask him
to speak up several times.
But Willie Reed would be heard
on this day, loud and clear.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: About 6:00 a.m.,
he's being sent to the store
to run an errand for his grandfather.
DYSON: Sees a truck go by.
A young Black man sitting there,
with his back to the cab,
and he notices it.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: He sees these white men
in the front of the truck,
and he sees Black men
in the back of the truck,
and perhaps it could be Emmett Till.
He's not sure until he sees
the photos in the newspapers.
After he runs the errand,
he's gotten to the store,
he's on his way back home,
and he's passing a barn.
ANNIE WRIGHT: J.W. Milam's brother,
he owned that barn,
that plantation over there.
JOHNNY THOMAS: Willie Reed heard
the child hollering and crying
on Sunday morning in Sunflower County.
PARKER: Your heart grieves,
and you are sad
because of how he suffered,
and you hear Willie Reed talk
about how he was screaming.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: But he also saw
a white man,
very tall with a shiny bald head.
And he saw this man come out of the barn,
go to the well and take a drink of water.
He clearly identifies this man
as J.W. Milam.
It was a remarkable development.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: He could
connect these two men together.
He could connect the incident
of someone screaming in the barn.
He also testified
there were Black men there,
and so this was very important
that it wasn't just the two white men,
that there were Black men
who were also involved.
Prosecuting attorneys tried
to find these witnesses,
but they never did find them.
And we, we learned later
that Sheriff Strider
had brought them in to the Charleston jail
under assumed names
so that they couldn't testify
at the trial.
JOHNNY THOMAS: My father,
Henry Lee Loggins,
was one of the African Americans
that was involved
in the murder of Emmett Till.
He, I think, during that period
was J.W. Milam's right hand,
as part of the Jim Crow ritual.
I think my father had to participate.
I just don't think they had
an opportunity to do otherwise,
other than what they was told.
Or like Emmett Till,
you're gonna get shot in the head
and tossed into the river
with a 70-pound cotton gin fan
tied to your neck.
This is where they tossed his body
into the Tallahatchie River.
Great God almighty.
Oh, my brother.
What were you thinking that night?
(sighs)
PEARSON: The defense attorneys
called Carolyn Bryant
as their first witness.
The prosecuting attorney objected,
but the judge allowed her
to give her testimony
with the jury out of the room.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: The defense is saying
this is an honor killing,
and therefore, the object
of this disrespect,
Carolyn Bryant, must testify.
She must show that her honor
was insulted in some way
by a person of color.
Carolyn Bryant is testifying
about the encounter
between she and Emmett Till
and that she was selling him
a piece of candy.
She put out her hand to take the money,
and he grabbed her hands
and wouldn't let her go
and said that, and allegedly,
that he had had sex
with women in the North
and he could have sex with her.
She was outraged, snatched her hands back,
and then she testifies that
he grabbed her around the waist.
He put his one hand
on one side of her hip,
the other hand on the other hip,
and pulled her toward him.
In the courtroom, they were
allowed to do a demonstration
of allegedly what Emmett Till did,
in which the defense counsel
put his hand on her left side
and her right side and pulled her.
And basically, after that,
the cousin walks in.
ANNIE WRIGHT: If you would go
to Mississippi
and see those country stores,
it was like three feet,
or four feet, really,
in between you and the person
on the other side.
So there was no way he could reach over,
you know, and touch her.
I think it's very important
for us to understand
that the testimony
that Carolyn Bryant gave
about what happened in that store
is the only testimony we have
about what took place within the store.
PARKER: You know, it's mind-boggling
because of all the stories
and things that were told
that happened at the store.
I was not interviewed about that
until 30 years later.
None of us was interviewed about it.
And that was not Emmett at all.
So all my life,
I just want his name cleared.
He was not that kind of person.
THELMA WRIGHT: It wasn't true.
The things that the lady said he did,
he wouldn't have done to a Black lady.
Now, if they had a case against Emmett,
there was never due process.
There's never any talk about,
"Why don't y'all take this to court?"
MUHAMMAD: That his wolf whistle
could be punishable by death,
yes, absurd, but pretty much
what the state of play was.
And in some small way, still with us.
You know, when we've seen in cases
like the McMichael father and son
who killed Ahmaud Arbery
WOMAN: Ahmaud Arbery went out
one day for an afternoon jog
and never came home.
(gunshot rings)
MAN: Chased and gunned down
by three white men.
PARKER: It's so similar to me.
It's so similar.
I know we've come a long way.
We made a lot of progress.
Laws make you behave better,
but they don't legislate the heart.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: J.W. Milam,
who was identified
as the person who kidnapped Emmett Till,
and Willie Reed identified
J.W. Milam at the barn,
they didn't want it
to be an open-and-shut case.
Sheriff Strider then continued
to put the doubt in the world
that that wasn't Emmett Till.
And so therefore,
they didn't have a correct
identification of the body
and how could you convict
someone of killing a person
when you're not sure
if this is the correct person.
(clock chimes)
MUHAMMAD: This is small town
Southern America.
There is something about the
drama unfolding in the court
that might be even a little
surprising to most people.
The district attorney,
who does a pretty good job
of vigorous prosecution in a case
where we know for a fact
both the sheriff and the deputy sheriff
were friends with the Milams and Bryants.
MAN: Sheriff, do you have any
reason to believe that the body
that was found in the Tallahatchie River
was not that of Emmett Till?
I don't believe the body that was found
was a 14-year-old boy.
I couldn't say that
it was not Emmett Till,
but it definitely wasn't
a 14-year-old boy.
JORDAN: The local press had been printing
that this was just a hoax
that the NAACP had built
in order to increase its membership.
PEARSON: The whole ridiculous defense
that Sheriff Strider pushed,
and that the defense attorneys pushed
was that it probably
wasn't even Emmett Till.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: When Emmett Till's body
was found in the Tallahatchie River,
he was so badly beaten.
The Black undertaker identified
the body from a ring.
MUHAMMAD: The initials "L.T.",
Louis Till,
belonged to Emmett's father,
and that Emmett Till
had been given the ring.
But his identity remained
a constant subject
for the defense to question.
WAKEFIELD: The main thing that stuck
in my mind
was one who summed up for the defense,
telling the jurors he was confident
that every last Anglo-Saxon
will vote to set these men free.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: And what
they're saying is to protect
the honor of a white woman,
to protect the Great White Way,
to protect white supremacy,
we must uphold the murder
as one that was necessary
and the jury knows it,
Mississippi knows it.
MOBLEY: If that jury came back
with an acquittal,
then white folks
were going to know for sure
that they could get away with murder.
It was going to be open season
on Black folks
and we were gonna be the prime targets.
I was not about to wait around for that.
PARKER: Emmett Till's mother,
Mamie, she, she was afraid.
Can you imagine this?
This woman was afraid she could get killed
in the courtroom.
We knew that the,
the end was not gonna be good.
WAKEFIELD: It only took the jurors
an hour and seven minutes
to return their verdict.
Their minds were made up.
BENSON: And only took that long
because they took a Coke break
to make it look good for the, the media
who had assembled there
to cover this trial.
BROWNE-MARSHALL: J.W. Milam
and Roy Bryant,
their verdict is not guilty
for both men on both charges.
MOBLEY: It was the shock heard
around the world.
The newspaper headlines
only echoed the public outcry
over that Sumner jury's verdict.
They told of 100,000 people
who turned out across the country
to protest, to demonstrate their outrage.
If we look at Emmett, and his death,
and the way things turned out,
and we compare it to the deaths
of Trayvon Martin
CROWD: Justice for Trayvon!
(chanting)
MAN: Gratified by the jury's verdict
THOMAS: Black people,
they didn't have nowhere to turn to.
Their goal was to try
to hold people accountable
for these things,
but it's almost impossible
in a place like Mississippi.
-MAN: Did you expect this verdict?
-Well, I was hoping for it.
MAN: What about the fairness
of the trial on both sides?
What is your comment on that?
I don't think you could find a judge
that would do a better job
than Judge Swango, for either side.
MAN: Roy, do you feel
the trial was well-handled?
Yes.
MUHAMMAD: So there's the possibility
of a kidnapping trial
that will happen within several
weeks of the murder trial
that led to the acquittal
of Milam and Bryant.
We see Mose Wright and Willie Reed,
they're gonna testify again.
This is another shot at a lesser charge,
but no less significant
in an act in pursuit of justice.
(applause)
WIDEMAN: The federal government
was so embarrassed
by this verdict that prosecutors charged
the Milams with kidnapping,
So it meant that the Till trial,
in a sense, wasn't over.
There was still a possibility for justice.
The federal government attempted
to try Milam brothers for kidnapping.
And that was gonna be
an almost impossible charge to deny
because it was on the record
of the first trial.
But it doesn't happen.
WIDEMAN: Senator Eastland
from Mississippi,
was a powerful man.
He went to the Army General's Office
and said,
"I want Louis Till's army record."
And it was posthaste given to him.
And he published it.
MUHAMMAD: Louis Till, who had served
during World War II in Europe,
had actually been found guilty,
convicted, and executed
for a rape and murder
while being a soldier
fighting in World War II.
And because of the character assassination
of Emmett Till's father,
therefore, the case looked much weaker
in prosecuting it
and moving that case forward.
The Leflore County, Mississippi
grand jury at Greenwood
adjourned just a short while ago
and did not return an indictment
in the Emmett Till kidnapping case.
Well, it was found out
there was leaked information
about Louis Till
in order to make Emmett Till
look like the son of a predator
and therefore a predator himself.
And then, give some credence
that perhaps that he wasn't
this innocent 14-year-old.
That he could possibly have tried
to attack Carolyn Bryant.
WIDEMAN: And once that
information came out,
it was impossible to try
the Milams for kidnapping.
And that was end of the story.
It's the father, son, son, father,
the continuity that illustrates
this case as typical
of what has been the history
of African Americans
in this country.
It never ends.
And the sins of the fathers
are visited upon the sons,
and upon the sons are predicted
the sins of the fathers.
MOBLEY: Louis died before he could see
what would happen to his son.
Bo died before he could learn
what had happened to his father.
Yet they were connected in ways
that ran as deep as their heritage,
as long as their bloodline.
I was left behind to think about
all the ways they were connected.
They, two or three months later,
confessed to having actually killed him.
MUHAMMAD: The story is told
in the Look magazine article,
which is sold for $4,000
by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam.
PARKER: The Look magazine piece,
I remember it like it was yesterday.
They said how disrespectful he was,
and that went a long way.
The Look magazine, they really justified
those guys killing him.
They say that they just wanted
to scare the boy.
They just wanted to give him a beating.
But this tough Negro just wouldn't relent,
wouldn't accept responsibility,
wouldn't back down.
So in the Look magazine,
Milam is quoted as saying
"Well, what else could we do?
He was hopeless.
I'm no bully.
I never hurt an n-word in my life.
But I just decided it was time
a few people got put on notice.
As long as I live
and can do anything about it,
n-words are gonna stay in their place.
N-words aren't gonna vote where I live.
If they did,
they'd control this government.
They ain't gonna go to school
with my kids.
And when a n-word gets close
to mentioning sex with a white woman,
he's tired o' living.
I'm likely to kill him.
Me and my folks fought for this country,
and we've got some rights.
And I just made up my mind.
'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em
sending your kind down here
to stir up trouble.
I'm going to make an example of you,
just so everyone can know
how me and my folks stand.'"
Mm, mm, mm ♪
Mm-mm-mm, mm, mm ♪
Mm, mm-mm-mm ♪
Mm, mm, mm ♪
Mm-mm, mm ♪
Mm-mm-mm, mm, mm ♪
Mm ♪