Across the Lines by Tracy Chapman (1988)

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Tracy Chapman (born March 30, 1964) is an American songwriter, known for her hits "Fast Car" and "Give Me One Reason" along with other singles "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" "Baby Can I Hold You" "Crossroads" "New Beginning" and "Telling Stories" She is a multi-platinum and four-time Grammy Award-winning musician.

Chapman started playing the guitar and composing the songs at the age of eight. She claims she may have been influenced to play the guitar for the first time by the TV show Hee Haw. Chapman's family received welfare. In her native Cleveland, the attempts of school desegregation led to civil strife and riots; as a teen, Chapman endured regular abuse and racially-based assaults.[1]

Key Lyrics

Across the Lines by Tracy Chapman

“Across the lines

Who would dare to go

Under the bridge

Over the tracks

That separates whites from blacks


Choose sides

Run for your life

Tonight the riots begin

On the back streets of America

They kill the dream of America


Little black girl gets assaulted

Ain't no reason why

Newspaper prints the story

And racist tempers fly

Next day it starts a riot

Knives and guns are drawn

Two black boys get killed

One white boy goes blind” [2]

Black Racism in the Era

Tracy Chapman focuses a great deal on pathos to make people aware of the situation in which she grew up through this song. She tells very personal stories of people that suffer from racism and violence that is caused by this type of hate. Tracy also references the color of a victim in every article, "Two black boys get killed, One white boy goes blind." This holds the focus on racial abuse since it's not about a person, it's a black person or a white person.

Tracy also speaks to ethos as she herself literally grew up in the "back streets of America", therefore, she definitely understands what she's talking about while adding a whole new dimension to the lyrics. She suggests that there are real people who are truly struggling because of these injustices. [3]

The killing of Ahmad Arbery as he jogged through the Georgia Subdivision brought to sharp relief the dangers Black Americans face as they move into communities where they are viewed as outsiders. Segregation remains one of the most strong state-imposed reinforcements of American racism, surviving informally (and even illegally) long after it was officially repealed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Tracy Chapman, born poor in Cleveland in 1965, observed as an infant how poor segregation led to brutality against Black people in their own communities.

Chapman, whose world evolved after she won a Connecticut boarding school scholarship, carried her political outlook and intimate history of being bullied as a teenager to her work as a rare Black singer-songwriter in the informally divided folk-rock scene of the 1990s. This song calls out for an eradication of all borders, even though it struggles with the fact that most Americans pick sides, causing others to run for their lives. [4]

Reference

  1. Tracy Chapman. en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on Feb 4, 2021.
  2. Tracy Chapman – Across the Lines. songmeanings.com. Retrieved on Feb 4, 2021.
  3. Mann, Kaitlin; Chris. Song Blog - Across the Lines by Tracy Chapman. November 15, 2008. chrismann-mylife.blogspot.com. Retrieved on Feb 4, 2021.
  4. Powers, Ann. We Insist: A Century Of Black Music Against State Violence. June 26, 2020. npr.org. Retrieved on Feb 4, 2021.