The Tradition Lyrics - Singles - Assata Shakur

Carry it on now. 

Carry it on. 

Carry it on now. 

Carry it on. 

Carry on the tradition. 

Their were Black People since the childhood of time 

who carried it on. 

In Ghana and Mali and Timbuktu 

We carried it on. 

Carried on the tradition. 

We hid in the bush. 

When the slave masters came 

holding spear 

And when the moment was ripe, 

leaped out and lanced the lifeblood 

of our would-be masters. 

We carried it on. 

On slave ships, 

hurling ourselves into oceans. 

Slitting the throats of our captors. 

We took their whips. 

And their ships 

Blood flowed in the Atlantic 

and it wasn't all ours. 

We carried it on. 

Fed Missy arsenic apple pies. 

Stole the axes from the shed. 

Went and chopped off master's head. 

We ran. We fought. 

We organized a railroad. 

An underground. 

We carried it on. 

In newspapers. In meetings. 

In arguments and street fights. 

We carried it on. 

In tales told to children. 

In chants and cantatas. 

In poems and blues songs 

and saxophone screams, 

We carried it on. 

In classrooms. In churches. 

In courtrooms. In prisons. 

We carried it on. 

On soapboxes and picket lines. 

Welfare lines, unemployment 

Our lives on the line, 

We carried it on. 

In sit-ins and pray ins 

And march ins and die ins, 

We carried it on. 

On cold Missouri midnights 

Pitting shotguns against lynch mobs 

On burning Brooklyn streets 

Pitting rocks against rifles, 

We carried it on. 

Against water hoses and bulldogs. 

Against nightsticks and bullets. 

Against tanks and tear gas. 

Needles and nooses. 

Bombs and birth control. 

We carried it on. 

In Selma and San Juan. 

Mozambique, Mississippi. 

In Brazil and in Boston, 

We carried it on. 

Through the lies and the sell-outs, 

The mistakes and the madness. 

Through pain and hunger and frustration, 

We carried it on. 

Carried on the tradition. 

Carried a strong tradition. 

Carried a proud tradition. 

Carried a Black tradition. 

Carry it on. 

Pass it down to the children. 

Pass it down. 

Carry it on. 

Carry it on now. 

Carry it on 

TO FREEDOM! 

Assata Shakur