Narrator: Just one hundred years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves, two hundred thousand people converged on Nation's capital to rally for Civil Rights. They come by train. They come by bus and by air. They come from the north, the south, east and west. They come united in one cause to urge Congress to pass the Civil Rights bill to end forever the racial inequity. By 11:30 there were more than two hundred thousand. A crowd bigger than the most optimistic forecasts. Now there's growing animation. It seems as if the demonstrators are finding strength in each other. I discovered their cause was a bond. Arrests in Washington were below normal. The police tributes to the fact for the first time in 30 years you couldn't even buy a beer in Washington. The Civil rights marches needed no stimulants like that. They provided their own. The songs that rings from the secret to the hillbillies, but with the one recurring theme, the chorus of twenty million Negroes. In Washington D.C., 1963, democracy speaks in a mighty voice.
Chuck D: Yo, check this out, man. We're rolling this way. That march in 1963 is a bit of nonsense. We ain't rolling like that no more. Matter of fact, young Black America, we're rolling up with seminars, press conferences and straight-up rallies. Am I right? We're gonna get what we gotta get. Coming to us. Word up. Man, we ain't going out like that - 1963 nonsense.
Spike Lee: Playback!
1989 is the number, another summer
(Get down!)
Sound of the Funky Drummer
Music is hitting your heart cause I know You Got Soul
(Brothers and Sisters!)
Listen if you're missing, y'all
Swinging while I'm singing
Giving what you're getting
Knowing what I know
While the Black band is sweating
And the rhythm rhymes rolling
Got to give us what we want
Got to give us what we need
Our freedom of speech is freedom or death
We got to fight the powers that be
Let me hear you say
"Fight the power!"
"Fight the power!"
"We've got to fight the powers that be!"
As the rhythm designed to bounce;
What counts is that the rhymes
Designed to fill your mind
Now that you've realized the pride's arrived
We got to pump the stuff to make us tough
From the heart
It's a start, a work of art
To revolutionize, make a change, nothing's strange
People, people, we are all the same
No, we're not the same
Cause we don't know the game
What we need is awareness;
We can't get careless.
You say, "What is this?"
My beloved, let's get down to business
Mental self-defensive fitness
Yo! Bum Rush The Show!
You gotta go for what you know
To make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Let me hear you say
"Fight the power!"
"Fight the power!"
"We've got to fight the powers that be!"
Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me, you see
Straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip out for beer during commercials
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in 4 parts without commercial interruptions
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Mendel Rivers to eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner
Because the revolution will not be televised, brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mae pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run
Or trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32 on reports from 29 districts
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being run out of Harlem on a rail with brand new process
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving for just the proper occasion.
The revolution will not be televised.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so goddamned relevant
And women will not care if Dick finally screwed Jane on Search for Tomorrow
Because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news
And no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Keys, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash or Englebert Humperdink
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people
You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath
