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lyrics

He Was a Man
Poem Sterling A. Brown. Music Cornelius Eady

It wasn’t about no woman,
It wasn’t about no rape,
He wasn’t crazy, and he wasn’t drunk,
An’ it wasn’t no shooting scrape.
He was a man, and they laid him down.

He wasn’t no quarrelsome feller,
And he let other folks alone,
But he took a life, as a man will do,
In a fight to save his own,
He was a man, and they laid him down.

He worked on his little homeplace
Down on the Eastern Shore,
He had his family, and he had his friends,
And he didn’t expect much more,
He was a man, and they laid him down.

He wasn’t nobody’s great man,
He wasn’t nobody’s good,
Was a po’ boy tried to get from life
What happiness he could,
He was a man, and they laid him down

He didn’t abuse Tom Wickley,
Said nothing when the white man curst,
But when Tom grabbed his gun, he pulled his own,
And his bullet got there first,
He was a man, and they laid him down.

Didn’t catch him in no manhunt,
But they took him from a hospital bed,
Stretched on his back in the nigger ward,
With a bullet wound in his head,
He was a man, and they laid him down.

It didn’t come off at midnight
Nor yet at the break of day,
It was in the broad noon daylight,
When they put po’ Will away,
He was a man, and they laid him down.

Didn’t take him to no swampland,
Didn’t take him to no woods,
Didn’t hide themselves, didn’t have no masks,
Didn’t wear no Ku Klux hoods,
He was a man, and they laid him down.

They strung him up on Main Street,
On a tree in the Court House Square,
And people came from miles around
To enjoy a holiday there,
He was a man, and they laid him down.

They hung him and they shot him,
They piled packing cases around,
They burnt up Will’s black body,
‘Cause he shot a white man down.
“He was a man, and we’ll lay him down.”

It wasn’t no solemn business,
Was more like a barbecue,
The crackers yelled when the fire blazed,
And the women and the children too---
“He was a man, and he laid him down.”

The Coroner and the Sheriff
Said: “Death by Hands Unknown.”
The mob broke up by midnight,
“Another uppity Nigger gone---
He was a man, an’ we laid him down.”

credits

from THE STERLING BROWN PROJECT: CORNELIUS EADY & ROUGH MAGIC with Rowan Ricardo Phillips, released January 18, 2021
CE: Vocal, Mountain Dulcimer and Acoustic Guitar
Robin Messing: Vocal
Concetta Abbate: Violin

Track Arranged by Rough Magic

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Cornelius Eady New York, New York

Cornelius Eady is the author of 8 books of poetry, lives in NYC and is the co-founder of Cave Canem. The band Rough Magic came out of the sessions for his CD/Chapbook BOOK OF HOOKS. (Kattywompus Press, Jan. 2013)

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