| Song for Trent Lott (who said we'd be a better country today if Strom Thurman had won the presidency) You think you'd have survived that vote Mr. White Man do you know what we do in the dark? we took your rags and made rope took your kindling and grew fruit picked your cotton and crafted reconstruction that slave-barrack hunger rages in our history this too we take into the dark take it with our dances and our languages huddle close to it in the Georgia cold or Alabama cold or Maryland cold who we be? you can't know us we surviving the crossing and the crossings we making it onto auction block and first-round draft pick we crossing ocean and swamp we descendants of amputees and unknown fathers ridged with welts and patience all this we take into the dark at night where you will not follow where you'd rather cut your losses on a nigger than lose two more bloodhounds to the chase we have survived imagine what we hold in the corners in our shadows who survive Tuskegee and small-pox blanket heroin and Cointelpro project housing and Jim Crow Lynchburg VA and Lynchburg PA Lynchburg TX and the whole muthafuckin' state of Mississippi |
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