Lyrics Blessed Are Those Who Struggle - The Last Poets, Bernard Purdie

Blessed Are Those Who Struggle

Blessed are those who struggle
Oppression is worse than the grave
Better to die for a noble cause
Than to live and die a slave
Blessed are those who courted death
Who offered their lives to give
Who dared to rebel, rather than serve
To die so that we might live
Blessed are those who took up arms
And dared to face our foes
Nat Turner, Vesey, Gariel, Chinque
To mention a few names we know
Blessed are the memories of those
Who were there at the Harper’s Ferry Raid
Strong were their hearts, noble their cause
And great was the price they paid
Blessed are the voices of those who stood up
And cried out, Let us be free!
Douglas and Garvey and Sojourner Truth
Dubois and Drew All
Blessed are the giants that we have loved
And lost to the bullet’s sting
Like Malcolm and Medgar and the Panthers who fell
And Martin Luther King
And blessed are the bodies of those
Who were hung from the limbs of the sycamore tree
Who found end to their hope at the end of a rope
'cause they dared to attempt to be free
Up through the years we’ve continued this fight
Our liberty to attain
And though we have faced insurmountable odds
Yet the will to resist remains
Blessed are the spirits of those who have died
In the prisons all over this land
Who committed one sin, they stood up like men
And got iced for just being a man
Blessed all you who will join with us now
In this struggle of life and death
So that freedom and peace will be more than a word
To the offspring that we have left