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.Feel so bad, I read about Birmingham,Although I know one thing: a man is just a man.God made this land, and this land,Is no one, no one s land.And God made everybody equal, equal, equal,I don t know why Birmingham,Treat, treat the people the way they do,But I ain t going down, Birmingham by myself,I clare I ain t.Yeah!One thing I do know:Our president, he is doing everything he can,Make every man equal right,It takes time, I do know,But one day: Birmingham, Mississippi,Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky,All them states,Arkansas, will fall in line.48 Birmingham Blues was released as a single on Vee-Jay Records, ablack-owned company based in Chicago.It seems likely that ownersVivian and James Bracken would have had some idealistic commitmentto the song s message, but it is also true that the changed climate of theearly 1960s may have made them believe it was now commercially safe,indeed lucrative, to issue such material.In Birmingham Blues Hooker s apparent willingness to drop abomb on Birmingham put him rather outside the ranks of the nonviolentarmy, which was forging a revolution in the South.Nevertheless, coupledwith the song s aggressive delivery, such sentiments reflected the new mil-itancy unleashed by the early movement.Equally significant was Hooker sthoroughly favorable view of President Kennedy s handling of the civilrights issue.Hooker s conviction that Kennedy is doing everything hecan, make every man equal right, was an opinion broadly shared bymany in the African-American community although it might have raiseda few eyebrows among movement leaders in Birmingham and beyond.Baseball hero Jackie Robinson, who had supported Richard Nixonduring the 1960 campaign, was not pleased with the president s record onM a r c h O n , D r.M a r t i n L u t h e r K i n g [ 9 7 ]
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