Americans are most all immigrants. HOW FAR WE HAVE COME When our fathers came to this golden land There was nothing but forests and rivers and sand And a few million Indians running around Now look what we’ve made of the little they found There’s cities of silver that shine in the night Churches of splendor and halls of delight And only an echo of Indian drums Who can deny how far we have come The slave ships they came with the whip and the rack And a million black people with scars on their back Picked cotton, drew water, and slept in the cold With a bible for comfort they were happy and cold The laws they were passed, slavery went Our lives integrated at least six percent In the sharecroppers shack and the big city slum Who can deny how far we have come The immigrants came from the green Irish shore From Poland and Russia, ten million and more Germany, Italy, all the world round To settle our ghettos and immigrant towns Their brains and their bodies they put to the wheel To build our great factories and towers of steel To march to our battles and carry our guns Who can deny how far we have come Now all through the Andes, they’ve heard of our name On the factory wall, in the palace of shame They drink Coca Cola and the times that they spend Goes straight to the pockets of our businessmen To pay for our Fords, and our split level homes Our Hi-Fis and records and six percent loans Our profits protected with dictators guns Who can deny how far we have come In Asia and Africa, they’re learning too How free enterprise can do wonders for you South Africas prisons are bursting with men Barbed wire keeps the Vietnamese in Where elections are daydreams that never get far American weapons are there standing guard We’re ready to fight for the lands that we run Who can deny how far we have come Our fears they are many though they’re seldom saved They’re black and they’re yellow and they’re brown and they’re red They see through the legend, they smell the decay They’re learning to fight the American way And we in our armchairs are quick to condemn Our bankbooks are falling, our profits might end The breaking of change is our funeral hum Who can deny how far we have come When our fathers came to this golden land There was nothing but forests and rivers and sand And a few million Indians running around Now look what we’ve made of the little they found There’s cities of silver that shine in the night Churches of splendor and halls of delight And only an echo of Indian drums Who can deny how far we have come
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