William Brown

In the Guilty: 30 Years box set, Newman says "I wanted to write something flat in which nothing happens emotionally. Now I've done it." Essentially, this song is about nothing according to Randy.

I had thought that William Brown hated his home life in North Carolina and when he moved to Omaha he relized how much better he liked it and never wanted to go back. So he didn't.

This song is about a black man named William \'Willy\' Brown who was lynched in 1919 in Omaha.

Non of the white people that lynched William Brawn went to prison. The Omaha lynching led to the Ku Klux Klan founded in 1921.

Apologies, but despite the similarity in name and location, it's an unconvincing stretch to claim it's the same William Brown. The real-life William Brown who was a victim of lynching was working as a coal hustler and possibly employed at a packinghouse or lumberyard. The William Brown in Newman's song was a wealthy family man given his "multiple cars," land ownership in North Carolina, ownership of what was presumably a tobacco farm (or business) and the ability to outright buy a successful business that can run itself - none of these things remotely apply to the real-life William Brown.