Remember when we were strange fruit hanging from the trees but never ripe enough to be picked?

Remember when we had no voice but a singlye syllable could get us whipped?

Remember when our WHOLE sore body counted as three-fifths of a person?

Or, when it was time to vote we seemed to miss every election

Remember when color determined whether you were iniside or out?

Remember when water fountains would discriminate, and schools did too, and if your red blood had any trace of black DNA you were seen as an ugly coon?

I may have not been ut there, but my bloodline was and I have a burning desire to remind us all

"Agitate, Agitate, AGITATE" were Frederick Douglas final words

Martin Luther King said, " A man who won't die for something, is not fit to live"

Ghandi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world"

But all I see is people complying and standing still

You all want to be "down" but you watch from your rooftops

You all say BLACK POWER but unplug when the new package includes the life of hard knocks

WAKE UP

Y'all must have forgotten

Your comfortable with society when it's constantly supporting our demise and extinction

Our men are in cages

Our boys only care about paychecks

Our women are acting like peasants

Our girls are misaken for play things

And we fail to realize our new mastas faces

Whether it be tuition or conditions that make you a victim of controlled circumstances

I don't mean to be a buzz-kill, but I know we all like to keep it real

And I am tired of watching everyone complain, but when a flyer goes around that doesn't promote rump-shaking you turn away

Something doesn't equate

Maybe my finance majors can find a soluion, but I don't have time to crunch numbers 

I'm here sifting through life

Trying to find golden nuggets of knowledge

Drain water from the wells of history

And pass around the broken chains of freedom

We like to say we are being held down by oppression

But "power concedes nothing without demand

It never did and it never will"

So if you choose to just sit down and wait for someone to find your actionless fight yout plight will continue to be treacherous

They say don't live in the past but how can you ignore it when it's starring you dead in the face

Pick your place and don't let it be on the side-line

Don't be defined by race but don't misplace its face with blank stares and white walls with no splash of your past

If you're only concerned with this, click-clack-pow, bow down, close your eyes in this dark room and fumble around, trying to hold onto what's hot, you're surely going to burn

Remember when people didn't hide behind a screen and when they had a message they would scream it loud and mean

Well, take my words as a hammer

I'm leaving this screen shattered

You can pick up te pieces, but while you're bending over looking down, someone's going to step on your back, rise  up and leave you broken

So if you're ready to stop pretending and move mountains, meet me at the start line

Because this battle is far from finished