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In the Tallahatchie river a whirlpool is filledWith the circling blood of young Emmett TillThis is his tale though known by too fewHard to believe but shamefully trueEmmett was fourteen when he came down south With his father’s ring and his Chicago mouthHe was with his cousins after a long days workThey'd bought sweets in the store from a white girlEmmet was big and not easily scaredHe boasted he did whatever he daredSo his cousins asked him to back up his wordsBy going in to flirt with the white girlEmmet said he'd been with white girls back homeSo with confidence he went into the store aloneWhen he came out he wolf-whistled goodbyeTo prove himself in his cousins’ eyesA silence fell, Emmett’s smile disappearedHis cousin’s faces, portraits of fearThey knew better than to talk out of turnThey’d grown up in the land where Klan crosses burnThey jumped into a car and sped off down the roadLetras de cancionesAll convinced that they were being followedThey ran into the fields afraid for their livesBut the car from behind just drove on byThree days past and nothing more they heardAbout the following car or the white girlBut on that night with the moon nearly filledTwo men came looking for young Emmett TillThey took him from his bed said get your shoesPointing a flashlight around the small roomThree pairs of eyes shone bright in the darkAnd watched an old pick up pull out of the yard These two men were both big and strongBoth old enough to know right from wrongThey drove that truck round dark dirt roadsLooking for the spot only dead men knowThey drove for an hour, and an hour more Until the engine stopped, and slamming both doors They dragged the boy into the pale moonlightTeach him a lesson, simple black and whiteEmmett Till was naked beaten and deadWhen they pulled him from the Tallahatchie RiverThey say Jesus Christ had thorns in his headWell Emmett Till was tied in barbed wireHis one eye hung on top of his cheekChicago mouth with no tongue and two teethThe sun shone through the hole in his headWhere they shot him to be sure he was deadAnd his face was so swollen and disfiguredThat but for the ring on his fingerHis own mother could not say stillThat the body was that of young Emmett TillWe know that Roy Bryant and J.W. MilamTook young Emmett Till to a barn and killed himI read their confession in a magazineSix months after the soda break juryThese two men are both dead many yearsNever excluded or punished by peersBut their hateful actions changed both their livesWith each breath of wind that whistled on byEmmett's mother has since gone to the graveHer coffin on his, the boy that she raisedIn a mother’s way she blamed herself for his fateBut her anger and guilt never once became hateShe gave speeches to crowds gathered in hopeThe times were a changing, chariots swinging lowAnd it wasn’t just song for the sake of songPeople were marching twenty five thousand strongLove is the force that fear barricades‘til the goodness in us dwindles and fadesAn example of hate will sing and be sungTo remind the many what the few have doneMy song ends here but the story goes onThe whirlpool spins round but the river flows onAnd all the clear water from mountain and hillRuns clear past the blood of young Emmett Till From Letras Mania