Acknowledge Your Own History Lyrics - The Jungle Brothers

You don't know who you are 

Look back into your past, brother 

Look back into your past, sister 

You don't know who you are 

Look back into your past, sister 

Look back into your past, brother 

My forefather was a king 

He wore fat gold chains and fat ruby rings 

Nobody believes this to be true 

Maybe it's because my eyes ain't blue 

You ain't gonna find it in your history book 

Come here, young blood and take a look 

You dig down deep inside this hard cover 

Don't you know you was bought, brother? 

All you read about is slavery 

Never about the black man's bravery 

You look at the pictures and all they show is 

African people with bones in their noses 

That ain't true, that's a lie 

You didn't get that from my lemon pie 

Yeah, I cut class, I got a D 

'Cause history meant nothing to me 

Except a definite nap that's why I always sat in the back 

I'd talk to girls or write a rhyme 'cause I didn't know 

All times are black man's times 

When I was young my mama told me stories 

Of black peoples' fight to bring us glory 

I used to think these were stories to put me to sleep 

But now I know mama's talk wasn't cheap 

Now I know Afrika's for Afrikaans 

And history's the blood of every woman and man 

Now I begin another search, the incredibly involved 

The incredibly difficult and incredibly frustrating search 

Now I begin another search, the incredibly involved 

The incredibly difficult and incredibly frustrating search 

Trying to pull together the history of the people 

Page one, page two, page three 

And still no signs of me 

Yeah, so I looked into the table of contents 

They wrote a little thing about us in the projects 

The only history we make is if we kill somebody 

Rape somebody but other than that we're nobody 

Speaking like a brother living in the jungle 

I know I was here first but I remain humble 

Now it's time to rekindle the fire 

A tribe of young brothers with the eye of the tiger 

Acknowledge your own, we have a home 

Put on this earth to live and roam 

Christopher chose to explore 

Discovered America, yeah, sure 

He thought the planet was square 

Traveled many places but we already had been there 

We left tracks, backtrack back 

First civilization, you know where that was found at 

Looking for the true black days of glory 

But you read in history, that's his story 

The red's for the blood and the black's for the man 

The green is the color that stands for the land 

The red's for the blood and the black's for the man 

The green is the color that stands for the land 

The red's for the blood and the black's for the man 

The green is the color that stands for the land 

The red's for the blood and the black's for the man 

The green is the color that stands for the land