I’ve come to tell ya people
I’ve traveled this great land
I’ve crossed two mountain ranges
And combed the desert sands
From Maine to California
By rail and by thumb
By now you all should know me
I’m the Great Historical Bum

I had hoped to write a song to sing
Of all the great things we have done
But the more that I looked back on things
It was hard to find a one
From genocide to slavery
To endless wars in far off lands
You’d have to be an amputee
To get the blood from off your hands

There was a feller come a-sailing
And I guess his name was Chris
To think about him, to this day,
Makes me double up my fist
He got a friendly welcome
Dragged the people off in chains
We’d be a whole lot better off if
He sank off the coast of Spain

On the Ivory Coast of Africa
The English and the Dutch
Doffed their caps and said my friends
We ain’t asking much
Just your mothers and your fathers
Your daughters and your sons
Smiling with their fingers
On the triggers of their guns

In the year of seventeen
Sixty-four and twelve
Said the colonies to England
We’ll do it all ourselves
All the big white wealthy landlords
Said now you’ll pay tax to me
They called it Revolution
But they set nobody free

It wasn’t so long after that
They turned their gazes west
And the big white wealthy landlords
Did what landlords do the best
They went and grabbed the land up
Threw the natives on their rears
They whipped and pushed and
Drove em down that long Trail of Tears

‘long come John Brown and Nat Turner
Of these folks we could boast
Or those who formed the Uprising
Of the German Coast
All the thousands of forgotten
Heroes with no names
Who gave their lives up fighting
To get Black folks out of chains

But the country wouldn’t give up
On that drug called slavery
So we had a war between the
Union and Confederacy
It was brother against brother
And father against son
six hundred twenty thousand
Dead before the war was done

With slavery abolished
We still had a ways to go
And we were making strides until
Along came Old Jim Crow
The Reconstruction Era
Was demolished by white fear
Separate; not quite equal
For another hundred years

Then came the Knights of Labor
And I double double you
To the boss said “if we don’t catch a break
We’ll beat the brakes off you
Brave men and women lined up
To get themselves a Union card
To face off with police, Pinkertons
The army, and the guard

They struck for higher wages
And they struck for shorter days
They struck to keep the workplace safe
For the women and the babes
They struck just to have met
Their basic human needs
And they were struck for daring
To come up from off their knees

The class war was a germ inside
Civilization’s seed
They love to see us fighting
Over color, faith, and creed
The less that we’re together
The more they stand to gain
Our power lies in the simple fact
We’re all workers the same

I’d better quit my talking
Cause the hour’s running late
But before I go please tell me when
America was great
That red cap’s got you lookin
Like a patriotic dunce
How’s about we try instead
To make her great for once