Seneca Village...

Andrew Williams bought a piece of land back in twenty-five
Sweat and blood in the Manhattan dirt just to stay alive
Three good churches, a wooden school, a place to call our own
We built a sanctuary in the mud, we built a righteous home.

But the papers called it a stagnant swamp, full of thieves and shame
They wanted a park for the wealthy class, and we were in the way.

Live in Seneca Village! We had the right to vote
Live in Seneca Village! They cut our only throat
Eminent domain, yeah, the gavel brought us down
They smashed our cabins, they cleared our lives,
To build their velvet town.

Came the summer of fifty-seven, the bayonets were bright
The city told us to pack our bags, they marched us into the night
Two hundred and fifty dollars of pride, gone in a single day
They tore down the roofs, they broke the altars, and swept the ash away.

Some went to Skunk Hollow, some died in the Five Points grime
They built a paradise on our bones, and called it a holy sign.

Live in Seneca Village! We had the right to vote!
Live in Seneca Village! They cut our only throat!
Eminent domain, yeah, the gavel brought us down
They smashed our cabins, they cleared our lives,
to build their velvet town.

Now the tourists walk on the Central grass where the ghosts of Seneca cry
They look at the lakes, they look at the trees, under the New York sky
 
Live in Seneca Village! We had the right to vote!
Live in Seneca Village! They cut our only throat!
Eminent domain, yeah, the gavel brought us down
They smashed our cabins, they cleared our lives,
to build their velvet town.

Where did Andrew go?
Where did Wilson run?
Erased from the map...
Under the Manhattan sun...

***

Summer sweat, the baseline of our song,
A sanctuary built where we belong.
Black soil bought, a refuge from the chain,
Two hundred souls immune to their disdain.
Churches rose where hidden shackles fell,
A sovereign breath within this urban hell.
But wealthy eyes peered through a golden lens,
And branded paradise a squatter's den.
 
They cast their shadows from a marble height,
To execute the theft under the guise of right.
Their progress thrives on eminent domain,
We bleed our history to feed their gain.

What you cultivate, they will repossess,
No sovereign scrap escapes their progress.
Displaced, erased, cast out into the cold,
The bitterest truth that went untold.
Your hearth is ash, your sanctuary torn...
And the unforgiven is born.

The papers spit their orchestrated lies,
To blind the public to the mothers' cries.
"A wretched camp," the headlines sneer and bark,
To pave the blueprint for their pristine park.
The badges march, bayonets in the sun,
The violent verdict of a loaded gun.
Where orchards bloomed and free men used to stride,
The wealthy wander and the phantoms hide.

They cast their shadows from a marble height,
To execute the theft under the guise of right.
Their progress thrives on eminent domain,
We bleed our history to feed their gain.
 
What you cultivate, they will repossess,
No sovereign scrap escapes their progress.
Displaced, erased, cast out into the cold,
The bitterest truth that went untold.
Your hearth is ash, your sanctuary torn...
And the unforgiven is born.

Beneath the manicured lawns of Central Park,
The roots of Seneca still grip the dark.
They buried our names, they leveled the stone,
But the soil remembers what it used to own.

Two hundred years of silence in the grass,
While high society sips from its glass.
You cleared the land, you thought the ledger cleared,
But vengeance lingers where the mandates sneered..

What you cultivate, they will repossess,
No sovereign scrap escapes their progress.
Displaced, erased, cast out into the cold,
The bitterest truth that went untold.
Your hearth is ash, your sanctuary torn...
And the unforgiven is born

Your hearth is ash...
The covenant torn...
Seneca Village...
Never reborn.