Arkansas (feat Peter & Bethany Yarrow)

05 ARKANSAS (feat. Bethany & Peter Yarrow)
(Jim Stanard)

Phillips County, Arkansas
black sharecroppers
were kept down by the law

50 years since Lincoln’s war
emancipation
ain’t worth much anymore

I was sheriff and trouble was in store

I don’t blame the circumstances
don’t blame the place or time
When I had a choice ‘tween right and wrong
couldn’t quite make up my mind

I looked the other way
Can’t pretend I didn’t know
but, if I can’t own my own mistakes
what left to call my own?
What left to call my own?

I heard that farmers organized
some were armed
The whites were terrified

Didn’t know what their intentions were
I formed a posse
Needed to make sure

Were they a threat? Or were they just dirt poor?

I don’t blame the circumstances
don’t blame the place or time
When I had a choice ‘tween right and wrong
couldn’t quite make up my mind

I looked the other way
Can’t pretend I didn’t know
but, if I can’t own my own mistakes
What left to call my own?
What left to call my own?

I led the posse on it’s search
we found sharecroppers in a church
I heard “watch out, he has a gun”
Then I just turned to run




The rifles’ echo in my head
tell the Devil count the dead
The rats, the mud, the misty cold
The stories never told

Should have keep my men under control

I don’t blame the circumstances
don’t blame the place or time
When I had a choice ‘tween right and wrong
couldn’t quite make up my mind

I looked the other way
Can’t pretend I didn’t know
but, if I can’t own my own mistakes
What left to call my own?
What left to call my own?

Phillips County, Arkansas
black sharecroppers
were kept down by the law