A seven year old named Gavin on a sidewalk with his cousin   In the Crown Heights part of Brooklyn, August 1991   A few blocks down a motorcade would head in their direction   And a fateful intersection had begun      The motorcade was carrying the Rabbi of a Jewish Sect   The neighborhood had many Jews, and also many blacks   Uneasy tensions simmered just because of who seemed different   Now a car and two young children were on track      A limo in the entourage lost control and hopped the curb   It struck the playing cousins, killing one and nearly two   The neighborhood electrified, the tension proved unbearable   The victim was a black kid, and the driver was a Jew      A private Jewish ambulance was first to find the mayhem   It's crew began to help the child pinned beneath the car   While angry blacks began to beat the driver of the limo   As frustration and offense became a blur      A New York City ambulance came, its crew chief saw the escalation   Of the scene and got that beaten driver whisked away   While two young children still lay bleeding on that Brooklyn sidewalk   It wasn't fair, that's what some would say      It meant another Jew would have to pay   That same night not far away a young man with a yarmulke   Was walking in the neighborhood like many times before   But now this night is different from all other nights, on this night   Yankel Rosenbaum was walking into war      A mob of angry men observed his clothing and came running toward him   Gaining speed and getting crazed with cries of "Get the Jew"   And get the Jew they did that night, they crushed a total stranger’s life   A mob of angry men had come unglued      A Holocaust in Brooklyn now renewed      Tempers strong, deep and wrong   Talk is cheap, families weeping   No one loving, pushing shoving   Anger growing, blood is flowing      Fast forward to the present time, eleven years and counting   That part of town has never quite recovered from that day   Will bigotry and blindnesses that run through every culture   Ever go away      A black hand and a white one reach through time and touch the present   It's the father of the little boy, the brother of the Jew   Today they come together to find meaning in two madnesses   Embracing one another in plain view      This is what the father had to say      We are strong   We are loving   We will keep   That loving going