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Jimmy Wilson
Ewan MacColl
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In Alabama 1958
The cost of human life is very low
A man that's black is trampled down
Just like men were a thousand years ago
These are more enlightened days
Cruel men and savage ways
We left long ago
Now every man may walk his road in peace
For all are free
Five thousand years ago a million men
Were gathered into royal Egypt's hands
Were bound together forced to build
Pyramids of stone in desert sands
These are more enlightened days
Cruel men and savage ways
We left long ago
Now every man may walk his road in peace
For all are free
Mary's son walked through a land of woe
Dreaming of the world as it could be
The good and lawful men of Rome
Nailed him like a robber to the tree
These are more enlightened days
Cruel men and savage ways
We left long ago
Now every man may walk his road in peace
For all are free
In Britain just a hundred years ago
The jails were full of poor and hungry men
Diggers, Chartists, many more fought
And died and rose to fight again
These are more enlightened days
Cruel men and savage ways
We left long ago
Now every man may walk his road in peace
For all are free
Last year a Negro stole a dollar bill
The judge he said we mustn't be severe
Instead of death we'll give him life imprisonment
To show there's justice here
These are more enlightened days
Cruel men and savage ways
We left long ago
Now every man may walk his road in peace
For all are free
And so throughout the ages we have seen
How progress marches ever on its way
No rack, no wheel, no Spanish boot
For Alabama's prisoners today
These are more enlightened days
Cruel men and savage ways
We left long ago
Now every man may walk his road in peace
For all are free
ย
The plague still runs in 1958
Johannesburg to Notting Hill and back
A plague of ignorance and hate
Men walk in fear because their skin is black
These are more enlightened days
No room for all these savage ways
Leave them, let them go
Now every man should walk his road in peace
Let men be free
ย