Released January 13, 1964 Genre Folk, blues Label Columbia | Recorded August 7, 1963 Length 3:33 Writer(s) Bob Dylan | |
"Only a Pawn in Their Game" is a song written by Bob Dylan about the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. It was released on Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin' album of 1964. The song suggests that Evers' killer does not bear sole blame for his crime, as he was only a pawn of rich white elites who incensed poor whites against blacks so as to distract them from their position on "the caboose of the train".
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Dylan first performed "Only a Pawn in Their Game" at a voter registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi. The song refers to the murder of Medgar Evers, who was the Mississippi leader of the NAACP. Civil rights activist Bernice Johnson would later tell critic Robert Shelton that "'Pawn' was the very first song that showed the poor white was as victimized by discrimination as the poor black. The Greenwood people didn't know that Pete [Seeger], Theo[dore Bikel] and Bobby [Dylan] were well known. (Seeger and Bikel were also present at the registration rally.) They were just happy to be getting support. But they really like Dylan down there in the cotton country."
Dylan sang the song at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.