Ole Jim Crow where ya bin?

Like Sammie I have a particular interest in that part of recent history called the 60s. While it may seem presumptuous of a white English woman I would like to compliment Camille’s post by putting together few clips to hopefully give a flavour of the Civil Rights struggle in the USA in the 50s and 60s.

I do this out of respect for a nation that finally began to win through. The struggle is not over, but the beginning of the end is in sight

Martin Luther King is now not just an American figure, just as Nelson Mandela with whom he had much in common is not simply a South African figure. They are course now world figures. Their names synonymous with the struggle for freedom. Although trying to illustrate the Civil Right struggle through song I sadly have not been able to get hold of many contemporaneous versions of the freedom songs.

There are those of course who would have you believe that Jim Crow was simply about racism. The truth is perhaps even more disgraceful it was driven by economic exploitation. The wealthy and powerful, exploiting both poor white and black people to sustain cheap labour markets. Race was simply a cynical manipulation to get the poor whites to think they were better off - a fact so eloquently put in our last clip -The Ballad of Medgar Evers.





Sitting in the smug comfort of the New Millennium it’s hard terms with the fact that 100 years after the American Civil War ostensibly to emancipate African Americans that this parlous state of affairs could have existed. It is a tribute to the American people that finally they did overcome.







Medgar Wiley Evers (1925 – 1963) was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi who was assassinated by Ku Klux Klan



A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' 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.

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been 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 the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the 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
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

From the powerty 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 clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the 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 he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game