Am I the only person who remembers "The Ballad of Samuel Mabry"? I heard it in summer camp in 1961 or 1962 and found it a very affecting song. But I haven't been able to find it in a search anywhere on the Web, including this site.

The recording I heard was by a bass-baritone who I had thought was Paul Robeson. So a few years ago, when Robert Sherman had a request show on his radio program "Woody's Children" (then on WQXR, now on WFUV), I requested Robeson singing it. Sherman couldn't find it. So I sent him the lyrics. Sherman wrote back that he had shown the lyric to Robeson's sons and they knew nothing about it.

What I'd like to know is, who wrote it, and who was the Paul Robeson sound-alike who recorded it? (He deserves to be famous in his own right.) Also, if someone knows the lyrics more accurately, I'd like to know.

Here are the lyrics. The words in square brackets are words I'm not sure of.

THE BALLAD OF SAMUEL MABRY
Songwriter: ??

Let me sing you the story of Samuel Mabry,
Negro hero of World War Two;
He fought in [Southern France, fought in Germany] and the Rhineland;
He fought in the Central European campaign.

He won four Bronze Stars and the Victory Medal,
He won the Good Conduct Medal too,
Spent ten painful years in a veterans' hospital
For wounds he received in his country's call.

On the 20th of May in 1960,
He was sitting on a park bench in old New York,
When up stepped a cop by the name of O'Keefe
Who called him a dirty so-and-so.

Then the cop took his club and beat him without pity;
He kicked him and he cursed him as he lay on the ground,
Saying, "We don't want your kind in the parks of this city,
Why don't you go back where you came from."

Samuel Mabry gave his precious youth
Defending the borders of this great land,
But he returned home to the violent outrage,
Another victim of Jim Crow's hand.

From Jacksonville to the beaches of Biloxi,
From New York right down to the Gulf,
The racists run wild with their bombings, beatings, shootings,
And that is the shame of America.

We didn't yield to Hitler's forces,
We didn't yield to his tyranny;
I'll be damned if I'll yield to the racists in this country;
I tell you, my people will be free.

Come all of you people who believe in justice,
Join in the fight to end this crime.
We've lived so long at Jim Crow's mercy;
I don't want the same for a child of mine.


TIA.