Loren's Pick: "Emmett Till", Bob Dylan

Yes, we all knew but how does one hold this lie for 60-years?

Silence. Hold. Hold. Hold Emmett in the light.

From the NYT.

“I was hoping that one day she would admit it, so it matters to me that she did, and it gives me some satisfaction,” said Wheeler Parker, 77, a cousin of Emmett’s who lives near Chicago. “It’s important to people understanding how the word of a white person against a black person was law, and a lot of black people lost their lives because of it. It really speaks to history, it shows what black people went through in those days.”

Dylan: "If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!"

Christina's pick: "Dark end of the Street" by Percy Sledge.

My pick feels frivolous next to Loren's, but at least they're bound by their Southern-ness. Percy here is singing about the joys and pains of infidelity, of keeping secrets. Today, we have TV shows and an abundance of songs and popular media about this phenomenon, but I still think this song is one of the most tragic, yet apt representations of wanting something you shouldn't have, and the guilt that ensues. Maybe you're a saint and you've always played by the rules. But for the rest of us, we've got Percy.