Black Christmas
Poem:Robert Morel – Translation: Jean Sturm and Tom Everett

1.In the State of Colony
Lives Mary,
With a man called Joseph
Carpenter.
Mary has a white skin and a white soul.
Her man has a white skin, just like me.

Refrain : The black man is black, the white man is
white ;
God is not black, God is not white.
In the Good Lord's Paradise
Ain't no poor blacks, ain't no dirty whites.

2.When came Christmas Day
Mary
Had a little Jesus
In the night.
The neighbours came, singing,
To see
The new-born that the Mother
Had made.

Refrain.

3.Virgin Mary's Boy
Is black,
Seeing this, the white man's world
Shouted: "Oh !…
Jesus or no, we don't want

a black-skinned kid
In the State of Colony!"

Refrain.

4.When the flowers bloomed
On Palm Sunday,
They sentenced to death
The black man.
In the State of Colony
There's a Cross,
And on the Cross a black man
Son of God.

Refrain + Coda