A black battlement of pines hides Holman
From the big-rig Yeomen on the highway
Barbwire stockades, sniper turrets, Cotton fields
Mechanized ghost of Fort Mims
Down that green river, like a wire, like a nerve, like a vein
Sacred names crawl through the mist
Alabama, Tallapoosa, burnin' plantation walls
Of the little man who called that sweet land his
I wasn't ready
Wasn't even there
Swamp-slick trailers flank the reconstructed fort
Waitin' on a four-hundred-year dream
Stars and Stripes rotted to strips, faded slavers' cross King Trump's banner
I hope the little man feels earth shake the day the flags drop
The walls come tumblin' down, downriver, the cotton's rottin' in the fields
They're hollerin' no prisons, no plantations in a free Alabama
I wasn't ready
Wasn't even there
Outlaws
Oh, please, make us fit to be outlaws
Oh, please, make us fit to be outlaws
Oh, please, make us fit to be outlaws
Ooh
♪
Through wild moonlight, across MLK
Up to the city lockup's brutal bulk
Rebel songs for debtors, indocumentation
Sweatin' streets, the shuttered hoodoo shops
Durag-crowned, dashiki-draped, black-masked
Cowboy-booted in Troy Davis Park
Indivisible under sweepin' choppers, SWAT tanks
The burnt matchbook of faceless cops
I wasn't ready
Wasn't even there
Outlaws
Oh, please, make us fit to be outlaws
Oh, please, make us fit to be outlaws
Oh, please, make us fit to be outlaws
Ooh
♪
I've been held by hazy skylines
Of downtown, Tuskegee, Anniston, and Birmingham
Bowed my head in the streets
Where they stood strong
Now I looked up into their ageless faces
Gazin' off yonder into the thickets and the pines
And I believe what they said
The old-time inscriptions read
"We fought the law and we won"
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won
We fought the law and we won