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 sister   We will be heard we will be heard