What If I Told You

"What if I told you

That I'm on this train

Because my two grown sons were frightened

Of me driving through the night

On a stretch of farm-stead highway

In Mississippi

'Cause they don't need a hood or a cross or a tree

What if I told you

That I'm headed to a funeral in Tupelo

On the hundred-acre farm

Purchased by my great-grandfather

Who learned to read 'cause his master's daughter

Taught him secretly

Not knowing what kind of schooling

His own children would receive

He taught them never to sign

Their names on anything

'Cause they don't need a hood or a cross or a tree

And would he have believed

That his great-granddaughter

All the way to the Ivy League?

Would he have believed millions of dollars

And yet still unsafe on that stretch of farm-stead highway?

What if I told you

That my eldest son

Loves a white girl whom I adore

And who lives in a part of town

Where a black man might be mistaken for

'Cause they don't need a hood or a cross or a tree

No, 'they don't need a hood or a cross or a tree

And if I told you all of that

Maybe you would understand

Why I have limited sympathy

For your desire to know the suffering

Of the working white man"

Monica explained in the dining car

As we hurtled south

In the growing dark