Only a Pawn in Their Game

In thinking about my last post, Tales of the Demonic, about how we become violent by playing our roles within the structures of the Principalities and Powers, I was struck today about how well a Bob Dylan song articulates this theology.

I don't have the Dylan cred my friend Mark has, but let me try to give you a bit of background about the Dylan song I was listening to today. The song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" is a song off Dylan's third album, the 1964 The Times They Are a-Changin'. The first song on the second side of the album (or track six on a modern CD) is "Only a Pawn in Their Game."

"Only a Pawn" is song about the assassination of Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers. The song is important theologically because it is a commentary on Evers' assassin, Byron De La Beckwith. In "Only a Pawn" Dylan suggests that De La Beckwith "can't be blamed" for the murder. Why? Dylan goes on to discuss how De La Beckwith, as a "poor white man," is just pawn within a larger socio-politico-economic system that keeps the status quo by having poor whites hate poor blacks. Dylan suggests that De La Beckwith is a captive to these demonic socioeconomic forces. The song is significant in Civil Rights history because it was one of the first songs that tried to identify with and understand the poor whites who gravitated to the Klu Klux Klan and the White Citizen's Councils. The song doesn't exonerate the violence but it does echo Jesus's cry from the cross, "They know not what they do."

Only a Pawn in Their Game - Bob Dylan

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood.
A finger fired the trigger to his name.
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game.

A South politician preaches to the poor white man,
"You got more than the blacks, don't complain.
You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain.
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid,
And the marshals and cops get the same,
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool.
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks,
And the hoof beats pound in his brain.
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught.
They lowered him down as a king.
But when the shadowy sun set on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.

Dylan sang the song at the 1963 March on Washington. You can see it here starting at the 3:33 mark: