If you'd take the train with me
Uptown, thru the misery
Of ghetto streets in morning light,
It's always night.
Take a window seat, put down your Times,
You can read between the lines,
Just meet the faces that you meet
Beyond the window's pane.

And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man.
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man.

Or put your girl to sleep sometime
With rats instead of nursery rhymes,
With hunger and your other children
By her side,
And wonder if you'll share your bed
With something else which must be fed,
For fear may lie beside you
Or it may sleep down the hall.

[Chorus:]

Come and see how well despair
Is seasoned by the stif'ling air,
See your ghetto in the good old
Sizzling summertime.
Suppose the streets were all on fire
The flames like tempers leaping higher
Suppose you'd lived there all your life,

D'you think that you would mind?
And it might begin to reach you
Why I give a damn about my fellow man;
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man