A bullet from the back of a bush
could make a river's blood.
A finger fired the trigger to his name.
A handle hid out in the dark.
A hand set the spark.
Two eyes took the aim
behind a man's brain.
But he can't be blamed.
He's only a pawn in their game.
This South politician preaches to the poor white man.
You got more than the blacks, don't complain.
You're better than them, you're being born
with white skin, they explain.
And the negro's name is used,
it is plain,
for the politician's
gain as he rises to fame.
And the poor white remains on a caboose of the train.
But it
ain't him to blame.
He's only a pawn in their game.
The deputy sheriffs and the soldiers,
the governors get paid.
Them marshals and cops get the same.
But the poor white man's
used in the hands of them all like a tool.
He's taught in his school from the start by the rule
that the laws are with him to protect his white skin,
to keep up his hate,
so he never thinks straight about the shape that he's in.
So it ain't him to blame.
He's only a pawn in their game.
From the poverty shacks,
he looks from the cracks to the tracks.
And the hoof beats pound in his brain.
And he's taught how to walk in a pack,
shoot in the back with his fist in a clench,
to hang and to lynch, to hide neath a hood,
to kill with no pain like a dog on a chain.
He ain't got no name.
But it ain't him to blame.
He's only a pawn in their game.
Today,
Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet that he caught.
They'll lower him down as a king.
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one that fired the gun,
you'll see by his grave on the stone that remains,
carved
next to his name, his epitaph plain.
Only a pawn in their game.