I couldn't find this one yesterday when somebody was singing it in the Singaround, but I found it today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg88EcZn5LQ


FATHER'S GRAVE
(Len Chandler)

With my swing blade in my hand, as I looked across the land
And thought of all the places that I’d been,
Of that old house that I called home,
Where I’d always been alone
And of that weedy grave that held my closest kin.

CHORUS: (after each verse)
And as I cut the weeds from o’er my father’s grave, father's grave,
I swore no child I bore would be a slave.

Oh, the old house was a shell, there were weeds around the well,
And I touched the rusty hinge that held no door
And the roof was caving in, It was always sort of thin,
And I found the place where the ash pan burned the floor.

I thought of all the glad and the good times that I had
With my pockets full of purple plums each fall
When the yard was wide and clean and the grass was short & green
Now the underbrush has laid its claim to all.

It made me feel so bad, lost the best friend that I had
And I didn't get to hear the preacher pray
Yes, and I was only eight, no, I can’t recall the date
Nor the reason I was late, but a funeral just can’t wait
And when I got to church they were rolling him away.


Notes: Len (Chandler) and Cordell Reagon travelled together during the summer Caravan through Mississippi and other areas of the South. They visited the house where Cordell grew up in Waverly, Tennessee. Cordell had talked often about not getting to his father's funeral on time They went to the graveyard and cut the weeds down over the grave. They talked about freedom and about whether their children would have to go through the difficult changes they were going through in the next generation. This is a personal song, yet the chorus speaks for many in the movement.

from Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement through its songs, edited by Guy and Candie Carawan (Sing Out!, 1989)