One Hundred Years & Counting (Ballad of the Tulsa Race Riots)

Unpublished

One hundred years and counting
Since that massacre
One hundred years and counting
Nobody said a word
When that White mob descended
Into Greenwood from Tulsa town
One hundred years and counting
Since they burned Black Wall Street down

One hundred years and counting
Since a mob of those white men
With guns came a-blazing
Still burns beneath my skin
Over eight-hundred wounded
Over three hundred dead
One hundred years and counting
Got no place to lay my head

One hundred years and counting
Since that Black teenager tripped
Over the foot of a White woman
As he began to flip
She began to scream
As if she had been raped
One hundred years and counting
Over ten-thousand displaced

One hundred years and counting
Black bodies in a heap
One hundred years and counting
Piled up in the streets
In this land of broken promises
Death is in the air
One hundred years and counting
Does anybody care

One hundred years and counting
Two pandemics, maybe more
Through the Great Depression
The Second World War
Eighteen sitting Presidents
Including, a Black one
One hundred years and counting
Time for justice to be done

One hundred years and counting
Before I’m buried in the ground
Time for reparation
Before the next global meltdown
Nothing can be change
Until it has been faced
One hundred years and counting
For the whole human race

One hundred years and counting
Since that massacre
One hundred years and counting
Nobody said a word
When that White mob descended
Into Greenwood from Tulsa town
One hundred years and counting
Since they burned Black Wall Street down

Words & Music by Larry Long
Copyright Larry Long 2021 | BMI

*Song inspired by Mr. Tony Norman, who survived the Tulsa Race Riots.

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