`Murdered At Howard Beach'

 

`Simon Legree Killed Tom' folk song lyrics

A protest folk song whose lyrics tell the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic 19th-century anti-slavery protest novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," that was written after re-reading Stowe's novel in 2005.

lyrics

(chorus)
Simon Legree killed Tom
When Tom did not inform
Simon Legree was master
But Slavery was wrong.

(verses)
Tom lived in Kentucky
Where he sang religious songs
He worked hard for Mr. Shelby
Whose Kindness made Tom feel secure
But Shelby owed some money
To a greedy slave trader
So he sold him his slaves Tom
And Eliza and her kid. (chorus)

Eliza and her child
Ran away in the night
Crossed the Ohio River
By walking across on ice
But Tom was taken South
And forced to leave his wife
Yet another kindly master
Put hope back in Tom's life. (chorus)

Then Tom's master was stabbed
While breaking up a tavern brawl
To Tom he had promised freedom
Yet failed to sign all the forms
So when the master died
His cruel wife now sold Tom
At an auction in the slave market
Where mothers and children sobbed. (chorus)

Tom's new master was brutal
His name was Simon Legree
Ex-slaves were his overseers
And they whipped without mercy
In the field of the plantation
Picking cotton seven days a week
No time to read his Bible
Tom felt the worst kind of slavery. (chorus)

Simon Legree tried to make Tom
Become a person less saintly
By beating Tom all the time
To get him to renounce his beliefs
But Tom would not sell his soul
And when Legree's slave women escaped
Legree said "Tell me where they hide
Or a slave's death is your fate." (chorus)

Donald Trump Company's Racially Discriminatory Rental Policy Revisited

During the 1970's a major racial discrimination suit was brought by the U.S. Justice Department against the family business, coincidentally, of 2016 Republican party presidential candidate Donald Trump and his father--because it apparently refused to rent apartments to African-American tenant applicants in some of the housing developments it owned and managed. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, noted:

"...The Justice Department...brought a major racial discrimination suit against the [Trump] company, contending that the Trumps had systematically refused to rent to Blacks. Four superintendents or rental agents working for [Donald and Fred] Trump confirmed to federal authorities that applications for apartments were coded by race. Doormen were told to discourage applications from Blacks by telling them that there were no vacancies or by jacking up the rent...One staffer said that his instructions came straight from Fred [Trump II] and the company went so far as to try to figure out how `to decrease the number of Black tenants' already in one development `by encouraging them to locate housing elsewhere.'

"The government was willing...to sign a consent decree with the Trumps, compelling them to take certain affirmative steps to integrate their estimated 14,000 units in the New York area, but Donald [Trump] and [Roy] Cohn agreed that they'd much rather fight...

"The litigation dragged on for a year and a half...Finally, Donald [Trump] signed the consent decree. The government called the decree--which required advertisements in minority papers, minority employment promotions, and a preferential vacancy listing with the Urban League--`one of the most far reaching ever negotiated.'...

"...Four years later, in the summer of 1978, the Justice Department found the Trumps in contempt of the decree and called them back into court...It all remained irrelevant to Donald [Trump]. The bottom line was that two government discrimination lawsuits had had no effect on the company's ability to make development deals, usually with the government's help..." 

Murdered At Howard Beach

(chorus)
Murdered at Howard Beach
By a band of white youths with bats
Murdered at Howard Beach
While people stood by and watched.

(verses)
Their car broke down on the wrong side of town
And a police tow truck never arrived
And so they walked in the dangerous dark
To the pizza place where racists hide. (chorus)

There are no police in Howard Beach
To protect a young Black man
And if you flee to the Belt Parkway
A cop's son may mow you down. (chorus)

Michael Griffith is dead after being stranded
And cornered in a white neighborhood
Racists rule New York, and they won't let you walk
Until power rests in Black hands. (chorus)

Griffith's car broke down on the wrong side of town
And a police tow truck never arrived
And Sandiford walked in the dangerous dark
To the pizza place where racists hide. (chorus)

There are no police in Howard Beach
To protect a young Black man
And Griffith escaped to the Belt Highway
But Dominick Blum mowed him down. (chorus)

Michael Griffith was corned and now he lies dead
And the D.A. won't jail his killers
Racists rule New York, and they won't let you walk
Until Black power arrests murderers. (chorus)

And people mow march and people now chant
From Howard Beach to Boys and Girls High
"No cover-up" is the shout and again people fight
For freedom right now and tonight. (chorus)