Sanders in the Ghetto

By Lucy Ferriss. I first heard the word in an Elvis Presley song, “In the Ghetto,” released not long after the Billy Joe Royal song “Down in the Boondocks.” I remember comparing the lyrics. “And his hunger burns,” Presley crooned of his “hungry little boy,”

so he starts to roam the streets at night
and he learns how to steal and he learns how to fight
In the ghetto

Billy Joe Royal’s boy was no less poor but more hopeful, counting on love and hard work to move him from the “boondocks” to a place “on the hill.”
I think I understood, then, that Presley’s boy was black. More...