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, a
black-owned company based in Chicago. It seems likely that owners
Vivian and James Bracken would have had some idealistic commitment
to the song s message, but it is also true that the changed climate of the
early 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 a
bomb on Birmingham put him rather outside the ranks of the nonviolent
army, which was forging a revolution in the South. Nevertheless, coupled
with the song s aggressive delivery, such sentiments reflected the new mil-
itancy unleashed by the early movement. Equally significant was Hooker s
thoroughly favorable view of President Kennedy s handling of the civil
rights issue. Hooker s conviction that Kennedy  is doing everything he
can, make every man equal right, was an opinion broadly shared by
many in the African-American community although it might have raised
a few eyebrows among movement leaders in Birmingham and beyond.
Baseball hero Jackie Robinson, who had supported Richard Nixon
during the 1960 campaign, was not pleased with the president s record on
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