Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah
One of the things you have to do in this
World is keep track of the people that you owe
I think of Lucy Parsons
Lucy Parsons from the Haymarket
Why, her husband Albert was a Confederate lieutenant from Texas
And she was a black woman from Waco
And they got married, if you can believe
That, at the end of the war, Civil War
She had seen her kin lynched from lampposts down there
So they couldn't live there together
They moved to Chicago where they became
Organizers, anarchist organizers
They organized a big demonstration for the eight-
Hour day in 1886, the Haymarket demonstration
A bomb was thrown and people were killed
Well, Albert Parsons and some others, they were framed up on that
And they were executed by the state of Illinois, political prisoners
Lucy lived well up into this century
Well into this century, died in 1940
One time, she was speaking at a big May Day
Rally back in the Haymarket, in the middle 1930s
She was incredibly old
She was led carefully up to the rostrum
Multitude of people there
She had her hair tied back in a tight, white bun
Her face a mass of deeply incised lines, deep-set beady black eyes
She was the image of everybody's great-grandmother
She hunched over that podium, hawk-like
And fixed that multitude with those beady black eyes and said
"What I want is for every greasy, grimy tramp to arm himself
With a knife or a gun, and, stationing himself at the
Doorways of the rich, shoot or stab them as they come out"
Well, she was just pissed, she was just pissed
Now, you see, I'm a pacifist, but I admire her spunk, by God
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah
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