In this song we fast forward about twenty years and we get to hear from the black community on the issue of racism in the pre-civil rights era in the south. The imagery in this song paints a very vivid picture of how the black community viewed their surroundings. The song as a whole compares the romanticized view of the South with its dark cultural reality. In the second stanza, the song begins by describing the South as “gallant” filled with scent of sweet and fresh scent of magnolia. It then quickly transitions to the line “the sudden smell of burning flesh” This quick transition and brutal description of the racial atrocities against African American community highlights the difference in perspective of reality as seen from the different
