Uploaded January 2010 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

This song has always been my favorite from "The Judy Collins Concert", even long before I understood the English lyrics and the stirring background. In memory of NAACP activist Medgar Evers, cowardly assassinated 1963 in Mississippi for no reason except being black.
________________________________________
Bye, bye, my baby, I'll rock you to sleep,
Sing you a sad song, it might make you weep.
Your daddy is dead, and he'll never come back,
And the reason they killed him because he was black.

I'll tell you a story that you ought to know,
It happened in our town a short while ago.
Your daddy was walking alone for some air,
And a man in the bushes was waiting right there.

That man shot your daddy and laughed while he died.
Your daddy lay dying with tears in his eyes.
He cried for the things that a man leaves undone,
And he cried for the dreams that he had for his son.

What will you do, son, when you are a man?
Will you learn to live lonely and hate all you can?
Will you try to be happy and try not to see
That all men are slaves till their brothers are free?

Bye, bye, my baby, I'll rock you to sleep,
Sing you a sad song, it might make you weep.
Your daddy is dead, and he'll never come back,
And the reason they killed him because he was black.