They wore hoods like haunted echoes, ghosts of pride and sharpened sin Whiskey stills in pinewood hollows, they lit their crosses for men A distant uncle ran with shadows, under flags a spat and burned And the lawman knew his name, but never dared to overturn I read the pages blood and gains, State Line Mob carved into my veins But there's one thing that adds to my voice, and it comes to one simple choice But I won't hide under white, won't drape myself in borrowed blight Dad broke the line, he dropped the torch, no anthem rises from the scorched Let them shout behind their screens, pretend they're built on southern things But hate's a lie, I won't recite, I won't hide under white Tennessee bootleg roads and pistol deals, stories told in red clay fields They speak of men with gambling pride, but they never showed their true fear inside They lost their whiskey in a county dry, feared the death angel that walked by their side But courage ain't in faltering numbers, it's in the soul that lives and never slumbers I've seen their threads online today, keyboard armies dressed in gray But I won't hide under white, won't wrap myself in a borrowed fight The blood is real, the past is raw, but I don't honor Mississippi outlaws Let them cling to myths and masks, fake their roots and dodge the facts But Dad didn't march in dead man's light, he chose to raise his children right Sheriff Buford stood with bat in hand, my kin ran crooked through the land And I could have followed easy tread, but I chose the living not the dead Legacy is not a fate, it's a mirror you choose to break And I broke mine piece by piece, built a life not born from grief My uncle whispered hate like prayer, ran the judge and tagged the county fair But love walked in with softer words, and I listened, I preferred Not to erase but to transcend, to be the start not just the end And now I speak so others hear, you're not your past you steer I'll plant a flag in brighter ground, where no white robe can tie me down No, I won't hide under white, won't kneel to ghosts that beg for spite Let them shout and let them fade, their power's made of fear and shade I've got fire that doesn't blind, truth that cuts but heals in time My back is straight, my name is mine, I won't hide under white
