Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit 

Billie Holiday. Or better yet, Abel Meeropol, the man who wrote the poem that turned into this song. 

Abel Meeropol graduated from a New York high school in 1921 and then went on to become an English teacher and teach there for 17 years. In the late 1930s, after seeing a particularly disturbing image depicting lynching, Meeropol wrote “Strange Fruit”, initially as a poem. He turned the poem into a song that made it’s way the club owner who passed it along to Billie Holiday. 

Abel Meeropol was also a communist and was called to testify for both the song and his communist ties. Eventually he left his position at the school and quit the Communist Party. But his story doesn’t end there. He was a brave and softhearted person. In 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage, leaving their two young sons orphaned. No relatives wanted to take in two boys who were so closely associated with communism. Meeropol and his wife Anne took the two boys in and raised them. Quite a backstory for the man who wrote what Times magazine called the “song of the century” in 1999. 

Moving past the songwriter to the performer, Billie Holiday also has quite the story surrounding such an influential and charged song. 

Born in 1915, Billie Holiday was an African American jazz singer who started her career by singing in nightclubs in Harlem. Eventually she was picked up by a record producer and began to record music until her death in 1959. She was first introduced to the song “Strange Fruit” in 1939 when she was singing at a cafe in New York City. For her first performance of this song, all the lights were turned out except for a spotlight on her face. She never did any encores; she disappeared before the lights came back up. Holiday performed this song the same way for the rest of her career. Her special connection to this song was because of her father, who died at 39 years old because he was turned away from a hospital for his race. While performing this song was important to her, not only for her father but for the people who were still suffering from racism all over the nation, some spectate that this song ultimately lead to her downfall. 

Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner Harry Anslinger was a known racist and determined to take down Holiday after she refused to stop performing “Strange Fruit”. He ensured that she was imprisoned for her drug usage and consequently, lost her license to perform at nightclubs. She still performed sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall but, as a result of her tumultuous childhood, continued to abuse drugs and alcohol. In 1959, the consequences of all those years of alcohol and drug abuse came to light in the form of health issues. Anslinger was still determined to ruin Holiday and sent his men to handcuff her to her bed in the hospital where she was being treated. Unable to receive treatment, Holiday died in 1959. 

The lyrics for “Strange Fruit” speak for themselves and carry a lot of emotion. 

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop