He was in the bus stop in Forty-six or five

With his Purple Heart he’d made it home alive Just to be beaten like a dog and left to die

All for a drink of water beneath the “whites only sign

In the shadow of a mountain

Where carved into the stone

Were faces of some men who thought that others could be owned,

I grew up with the Williams, old Hank and Tennessee It’s the day I shook Hosea’s hand that my eyes began to see On the road from Selma, in 1965

On that bloody Sunday, he was leading up the charge

All because he wanted just what he’d fought to save for me and you To sit at the Woolworth counter and spin on those shiny stools

Yeah, I grew up with the Williams, old Hank and Tennessee It was the day I shook Hosea’s hand that my eyes began to see I was in Montgomery on the day he died

I stopped and saw Ms Audrey, end headed down to the river side Where I sat with old Captain Pät and we shared a drink or two For the Bull in the china closet, for Thunderbolt and the Truth As I tried to ponder the work left to be done

I wished I was half as un-boughten and un-bossed as that man was

Yeah, I grew up with the Williams, old Hank and Tennessee It was the day I shook Hosea’s hand that my eyes began to see