THE PRICE OF COTTON
Times are good on the old plantation
Selling our cotton to the other nations
Cotton crop is booming, enslaved blacks are hitched
Plantation owners getting rich, rich, rich
Sitting on the porch of the mansion place
Keeping free labor enslaved in place
Free profits to the sky, all ill gotten
Making a pretty penny on the price of cotton
Took black families and broke them up
Cause mounds of cotton money, can’t get enough
The way we are treated, sure is rotten
Misery beyond words is the price of cotton
Sunrise to sundown I work for free
Great Lord almighty, have mercy on me
Picking this cotton till my hands and fingers bleed
To fulfill a whiteman’s ungodly, inhuman greed
Money and power keeps some people free
Money and power maintains slavery
Drunken fights by poor whites another pitiful fact
Who are worked as slaves in the cotton patch
Yes, the plantation owner’s happiness is in the air
Mixed with the stench of overwhelming despair
Never ever, ever, ever, let it be forgotten
The great, great difference in the price of cotton