I heard this song when I was a young kid with long hair in around 1965. It seemed to sum up what I felt. All those people who spout about freedom really are the most conforming of all. They did everything they could to beat anything different into the shape they thought it should be.
I never knew who wrote it or recorded it. It is a thing of its time but it resonated with my fifteen year old mind and seemed to sum up a bit of what I was going through.
Home Of The Brave
Jody Miller
(B. Mann-C. Weil)
The school board says “he can’t come to school, no more”
Unless he wears his hair like he wore it before
The PTA and all the mothers, say he ought to look like the others
Home of the brave, land of the free
Why won’t you let him be what he wants to be
The kids all laugh at his hair and funny clothes
And more than once he’s gone home with a bloody nose
He’s not like them and they can’t ignore it. So they all hate him for it
Home of the brave, land of the free
Why won’t you let him be what he wants to be
It really burns me up, when they put him down
He’s the only one whose saying something in this whole town
Instead of those the trouble they hand him, why don’t they try to understand him
Home of the brave, land of the free
Why won’t you let him be what he wants to be
He never hurt nobody
Why won’t you let him be what he wants to be
He just a little bit different
Why won’t you let him be what he wants to be
You got to understand him
Why won’t you let him be what he wants to be
And are for personal use and research interest only