Only a Pawn in their Game
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 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 powerty 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 sets 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

A Pawn’s Reflection
by Thomas Vo

For decades, the blacks have endured a low status and were challenged with injustice and inequality. In the late 1940s, they stood up and broke their silence. An entire movement was forming with the purpose of human rights equality. As the movement began to climax, many forms of protest took place: bus boycotts, sit-ins, marches, creation of Black parties, and last but not least, protest songs. Protest songs help display the frustration, fears, and desires of the common people. Of the many artists who wrote protest songs, Bob Dylan was one of the more prominent protest song writers. The song “Only a Pawn in their Game," written as a reply to the assassination of Medgar Evers, took a massive stance against the corrupt government and how the common people’s rights and equalities are being used for the benefit of the authorities.

Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, was raised in Minnesota (Rock Hall). As he progressed as a musician, his genre of music began to change; he moved from folk to rock and roll. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Dylan has played the role of a renegade throughout his career. He never considered himself to be a poet because, as he admitted, “I don’t like the word.” In June 12, 1963, a civil rights activist, Medgar Evers, was assassinated. The alleged killer, Byron De La Beckwith, was a member of the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan (Padgett). He was tried twice and the all-white juries couldn’t reach at a verdict (Vollers 42). The miscarriage of justice caused a massive uproar. While blacks were murdered due to their cause, the whites remained unpunished for committing the actual murders (Feagin 39). On August 7, 1963, Bob Dylan released the song “Only a Pawn in their Game,” which compared Medgar Evers and the assassin to being pawns on a chessboard. The song intended to point out that the assassination was a symptom of greater problems to come.

The song portrayed the poor whites being victimized by discrimination just as the poor blacks. Dylan didn’t blame everything on Byron Beckwith for the assassination of Medgar Evers. From the last two lines of the first stanza, “But he can’t be blamed; He’s only a pawn in their game,” one can understand that Beckwith was just a pawn in the games of his leaders, in this case, the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan. Byron Beckwith was brainwashed with the ideology of white supremacy. Members of such organizations may obtain a sensation of being part of something great. This is similar to a belief known as Social Darwinism: a theory that stated only the strongest and fittest should flourish in society while the weak and unfit should be allowed to perish. For example, during the colonial era, many of the settlers believed that the natives were unfit for the land. Thus the colonists felt justified in seizing the land and resources.

The second stanza of the song “Only a Pawn in their Game” depicts the games that the politicians play on the poor blacks and whites. The propaganda-like statement that Dylan incorporated in the second line, “You got more than the blacks, don’t complain … You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” sheds light on the meticulous ways politicians utilize their words to persuade a certain group in believing what they want them to believe. Politicians are almost similar to the grand chess masters of a perpetual game of chess. Pawns can only move forward and never look back while the King remains cozy in its protection. The lives of the less valuable pieces vary and solely rely on the minds of their chess master.

The purpose of sacrifices is often to open up the area surrounding the king and then deliver the final blow. The authority risks the lives of the poor in order to achieve a better position, in politics as well as status. A rather common type of sacrifice, the phony sacrifice, is used by many chess players. Some refer to this move as “removing the guard.” For example, the opponent has a pawn in front of their queen, in order to successfully execute this sacrifice, one would move one of the more valuable pieces, let’s say the rook, into the diagonal path of the pawn. If the opponent falls to the trap and attack the rook with the pawn, then this leaves the queen wide open for a kill. This can relate to politics because, most of the time, the politicians would trick another into accomplishing tasks that seem to be beneficial and eventually take advantage of the blunder and make his/her move. One of the less common types of sacrifices in a chess game is a positional sacrifice. This type of sacrifice requires a profound understanding of positional principles; something that many chess masters have yet to grasp but every politician has mastered. The object of the positional sacrifice is to break open a hole in the enemy’s lines by squeezing one of your pieces in there. This sacrificial piece indeed will be captured but it has accomplished its task: break the defensive line. However, sacrifices sometimes only serve to open up the board and use up already dormant pieces, thus it only places a minor threat to the opponent in a long-term game plan.

On August 28, 1963, a significant event took place. From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The style of the speech was like that of a sermon. The phrase, “We will not be satisfied until justice runs down like waters and righteousness like a might stream,” was evident that the civil rights movement had just begun and will not stop until the authority collapse under its momentum (Martin Luther King, Jr.). The goal of the movement was to abolish segregation and give rise to equality among the common people.  Among the files and ranks of people, Bob Dylan was there. He was one of the many performers who performed after the speech. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s closest advisor, Ralph Abernathy, once claimed, “[The March on Washington] made it clear that we did not have to use violence to achieve the goals which we were seeking.”

It is not how eloquent your speech is written but rather how the speech is presented by the speaker and perceived by the mass. When Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his speech during the March on Washington, it wasn’t merely just a “leader-to-follower” speech. Unlike generals giving orders to troops to head into a mine-filled warzone, the speech spoke to each person individually. It reached out to them in ways that the authority never can. Protest songs do the same; they grasp their listeners through the universal language: music. The concepts that Dylan based his songs on weren’t race or civil rights issues, but rather everyday injustices and tragedies. These tragedies include, but not limited to, the sacrifices of weak forces in order to give rise to new authority. The theme of political sacrifices is very similar to those of chess games. When a game ends, the captured pieces remain forgotten while the surviving pieces are analyzed. Those who were lost to the enemies will eventually transform into pawns and remain lost in an inscrutable abyss. And as General MacArthur once said, “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”