Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit

Thomas Shipp and Abraham Smith


Abel Meeropol, a schoolteacher from the Bronx, saw Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the lynching of two black men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, in Marion, Indiana.   With that photograph in mind,  he wrote the poem "Strange Fruit".

Strange Fruit
by Lewis Allan,  c1940

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 magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!
  
Here is 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

Few of the millions of people who have heard "Strange Fruit" are aware of its  history.  I had listened to the song "Strange Fruit" as  sung by Billie Holiday,  hundreds of times.  On three occasions,  I had the pleasure of hearing her singing it in person.  The only thing that I knew about the song was that it was about two black men who had been lynched. 
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It was written in the mid-1930s by a New York City public school teacher by the name of Abel Meeropol.

Abel Meeropol.


Abel Meeropol was born in New York in 1903, into a Jewish immigrant family.   Like many others, of his background and his generation,  he was radicalized first by the Russian Revolution, then the dangers of Fascism, and finally the Great Depression.

The poem was written in the late 1930s,  long before Abel Meeropol would meet Billie Holiday.   At that time,  he was teaching at De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx, New York. 

"Strange Fruit" was first printed as "Bitter Fruit" in the January 1937 issue of "The New York Teacher", the publication of the Teachers Union,  in which the Communist Party,  at that  time,  had an influential role.

Abel Meeropol then wrote under the pen name of Lewis Allan,  (which was the names of his two children who were stillborn),  He would later set the poem to music on his own.  For the first two years after it was written,  the song was performed in political circles, at political meetings and benefits,  as well as house parties.

Billie Holiday,

In early 1939,  Billie Holiday was performing in the newly opened nightclub "Café Society" which was located  in lower Manhattan.   Abel Meeropol gave the song to Barney Josephson,  who was the the owner of the club,  and had him ask if Billie Holiday would sing it.  There were  some accounts that said Billie Holiday was  not particularly impressed by the lyrics, other accounts said that she possibly was not aware of the meaning of  the song.  Billie Holiday later, agreed to sing it.  Her rendition of the song made an enormous impression on the Café Society's customers.  She was soon singing "Strange Fruit" every night.  In April of 1939,  Billie Holiday recorded the song..

Billie Holiday on Commodore Records


Getting the song recorded was not an easy task.  Columbia Records, which was Billy Holiday's regular record label,  refused to have anything to do with  it.   It was Commodore Records,  a small recording company that was run by Milton Gabler,  which released the song.  Milton Gabler was later interviewed in a film that would be titled the same.

"Strange Fruit" was released on record in 1939,  and quickly became well known.  It had a particular impact on those who were politically aware,  among artists,  musicians,  actors  and other performers, as well as college students and intellectuals.

David Margolick's book, "Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song" (originally published as "Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society and an Early Cry for Civil Rights"  by Running Press;  it is now available from Harper Perennial),  quoting numerous prominent figures,  "demonstrates how the song articulated the growing awareness and anger that was to find expression in the rise of the mass civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s".

At the time. "Strange Fruit" was played only rarely on the radio.  There were not very many courageous DJ's at that point in time.  America was at war.  There had been several racial conflicts in the U.S. Army.   It was also a time period when the the segregationist Southern Dixiecrats played a leading role in the Democratic Party and the politics of the United States.  It took a mass movement of American citizens to finally expose and dismantle the apartheid system that had formed in American music, American culture and minds.  The Dixiecrats were largely responsible for setting the stage for the lynchings of black Americans.

Rubin Stacy - lynched in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on July 19, 1935.


The conservative estimates say that there were more than 4,000 lynchings in the fifty years before 1940.  The majority of the lynchings took place in the South, and most of the victims were black.  There outcry over these murderous activities,  was very little or none:  it depended on the American geographical location.

It appears that the Socialistic and communistic leaning Americans shamed the remaining populous, since they  were in the forefront of the struggle and outcry against the lynchings in America.

Strange Fruit by Nina Simone.

This history is related in Margolick's book, as well as in the 2002 film, "Strange Fruit".  The focus of the book is largely on Billie Holiday and on her relationship to the song "Strange Fruit."

The film,  which is directed by Joel Katz,  gives the greater emphasis to Abel Meeropol's story.  It also presents interviews dealing with the historic and contemporary significance of the song.

The Anti-communist politicians in America generally agreed with the Southern racists that "the fight for racial equality was basically a left-wing plot",  The anti-communist crusades did not begin with the alchoholic senator Joseph McCarthy in the postwar period.  In 1941,  Abel Meeropol was subpoenaed before the witch-hunting "Rapp-Coudert committee",  which had been set up by the New York State legislature to investigate alleged Communist influence in the public school system.   Mr. Abel Meeropol  was asked if "Strange Fruit" had been commissioned by the Communist Party,  or whether he had been paid by the party to write it.

Despite this un-American political atmosphere,  and the virtual banning of the song from the radio,  at one point the song was number 16 on the pop charts.

Diana Ross - Strange Fruit .

During the postwar witch-hunt,  the performance of "Strange Fruit" became even more difficult.  Some clubs even refused to allow Billy Holiday to sing what had become her signature song.

Billie Holiday insisted on contracts that guaranteed her right to sing it,  but even that did not resolve the issue.

Margolick's book tells how at one club on West 52nd Street,  Billy Holiday cried after her performance. "Did you see the bartender ringing the cash register all through?"   She said:  "He always does that when I sing."   The bartender was attempting to disrupt he singing of the song.

Strange Fruit,


Today, the interest and awareness of "Strange Fruit" appears to have dropped off.

Is it possible that the segregationists and racists are now getting more Bold and Vicious?

"The county sheriff says that a 26-year-old black man,  Frederick Jermaine Carter,   found hanged from an oak tree in Greenwood, Mississippi,  apparently committed suicide,   but the president of the local NAACP challenges that explanation and says the group will monitor developments in the case." - News One