Jason Robert Brown Twenty Miles From Marietta
[DORSEY, spoken]
Your Honor, Gentlemen of the Jury, and good people of Georgia:
(sung)
There is a farmhouse in Marietta
Kinda battered and forlorn
And in that farmhouse, fourteen years ago
A girl named Mary was born
And she would dance in fields of cotton
There was a tree where she could play
But when her Daddy died, two years ago
Mary and her Mama moved away
It's only twenty miles from Marietta
To a fact'ry in the center of this town
And twenty miles was all it took
To strike that sweet girl down
People of Atlanta fought for freedom to their graves
And now their city is a fact'ry and their children are its slaves
People of Atlanta swing their city gates wide
And look at what you've wrought!
[He points to LEO, who shrinks from the glare]