Strange Messengers

I looked upon the book of life
 Tracing the lines of face after face
 Looking down at their naked feet
 Bound in chains bound in chains
 Chains of leather chains of gold
 We knew it was wrong but we looked away
 And paraded them down the colonial streets
 And that's how they became enslaved
 They came across on the great ships
 Mothers separated from their babes
 Husbands stood on the auction block
 Bound in chains bound in chains
 Chains of leather chains of gold
 Men knew it was wrong but they looked away
 And led them to toil in fields of white
 As they turned their necks to a bitter landscape
 Oh the people I hear them calling
 Am I not a man and a brother
 Am I not a woman and a sister
 History sends us such strange messengers
 They come down through time
 To embrace to enrage
 And in their arms even stranger fruit
 And they swing from the trees
 With their vision in flames
 Ropes of leather ropes of gold
 Men knew it was wrong but they looked away
 Messengers swinging from twisted rope
 As they turned their necks to a bitter landscape
 Oh the people I hear them calling
 Am I not a man and a brother
 Am I not a woman and a siste
 r We will be heard we will be heard