Here comes a black child, not sure of his future.
Destiny is not kind to him, without anyone to nurture.
He does not know segregation seeps back,
With Jim Crow laws and redeemers cutting them no slack.

Emancipation Proclamation was once Lincoln’s plan,
To end forms of slavery in all southern lands.
But when he died, only republicans and the Freedman’s Bureau were left to fight.
Democrats and redeemers ruined their hope, when they pulled budgets tight.

Here comes a black child, looking for a job.
With his parents sharecropping, the pay makes them sob.
For doing the work on the whole field,
Land owners have supplies but less than half the crops they yield.

Only a life of debt, it holds.
They just made ends meet, when the crops were sold.
However, jobs in the city did not raise much hope,
For southern mills wouldn’t allow blacks, so they couldn’t cope.

Here comes a black child, crouching in a shack.
Hiding from the Ku Klux Klan, ready to attack.
They come wearing billowy, white cloaks.
Burning crosses in yards to scare equal-rights folks.

They began to miss Lincoln, with Johnson gone wrong.
Congress started to impeach him, but decided he wouldn’t last long.
When Grant took over he wanted violence to cease.
So he chanted with followers, “Let us have peace.”

Here comes a black child, wishing to be free.
Wanting white people to think, what if that was me?
Longing for equal rights and voting coming soon,
Feeling trapped and hurt inside, their lives are simply strewn.

This black child wants a sense of unity, knowing he is a proud American, too.
But its hard for him to fathom that about how he is treated, many have no clue.
For after the Civil War, a new war began.
One for America, for freedom for every man.