American Negro: A Migrant’s Story

Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
From my West African Motherland
to an island in the Caribbeanne
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
To a plantation in a Southern State
to Emancipation from which I could not escape
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Back to enslavement
because the 13th Amendment says they can
because of convict leasing
just ask any historianne
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Went home to the Maker
from being hung from a tree
cause the Ku Klux Klan
thought that’s how it ought to be
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Jim Crow
a great friend of the Klan
so I left the South
to become a Chicagoanne
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Congress cut off funding
for Wars in foreign lands
created a drug called Crack
from the Columbian Hinterlands
Started a Drug War
aimed at the Black community
and locked us all up
with impunity
Listen to the drum beat
drum beat
Listen to my heart weep
heart weep
Now I’m a part of this new diaspora
from Miami, L.A., Brooklyn to Peoria
21st Century Jim Crow.
Now a penitentiary cell is my new home
Back to bread and water being a full-course meal
just like an 1841 so what’s the big deal
THIS IS THE AMERICAN NEGROS’ MIGRANT STORY
went from a plantation Hell
to a Warden’s prison cell
Now we’re just lonely and alone
and the songs we once heard
we don’t hear no moe
“Brotha over there
in the next cell,
‘Are you still listening for the drum beat
the drum beat?’
I don’t”
Oh Lord, just put my heart to sleep
heart to sleep
American Negro: A Migrant’s Story

by Donald “C-Note” Hooker

Artwork by C-Note