Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" and Its Anti-Racist Legacy

Introduction: A Song Born from Racial Terror

Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" is one of the most powerful examples of an explicitly anti-racist song in American musical history. It details the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930 (Phillips, 2007). Holiday describes the lynchings while also commenting on the historical, political, and social context of racially motivated death. She was keenly aware of the historical and cultural elements in American life that set the stage for such an act to occur.

The line "Blood on the leaves / blood at the root" carries a distinct double meaning, referring both to the grisly crime of lynching — blood on the leaves — and to the evil at the "root" of American society. Other lines refer more explicitly to the act itself, as in "Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze." Holiday's historic performance of "Strange Fruit" represented a major shift in awareness about the problem of racism in American society.

Abel Meeropol and the Origins of the Poem

Holiday derived the lyrics of "Strange Fruit" from a poem by Lewis Allan — a pseudonym for Abel Meeropol, a New Yorker who wrote the poem after seeing a photograph of the Shipp and Smith lynching. Meeropol was an English teacher who also set his poem to music and performed it one evening at a club in New York City. Phillips (2007) notes that Meeropol first performed his musical rendition at a Teachers Union meeting. The owner of the Greenwich Village nightclub Cafe Society, Barney Josephson, eventually introduced Billie Holiday to Meeropol, who gave the poem — now a song — to Holiday (Blair, 2012). In her autobiography, Holiday recalls the moment she met Meeropol (whom she knew as Allan): "When he showed me that poem, I dug it right off. It seemed to spell out all the things that killed Pop" (p. 84). As Phillips (2007) puts it, "Holiday knew that she could sing this song like nobody else could, or would, ever sing it. She glimpsed truth in the song and that was enough."

Phillips (2007) suggests that Meeropol changed his name partly out of fear of anti-Semitism. However, another important reason for the pseudonym was the growing anti-Communist sentiment in America in 1939. Meeropol was, "like many other New York teachers in his day," a Communist (Blair, 2012). The brand of communism to which Meeropol and his contemporaries subscribed bore little resemblance to the type the United States would spend the remainder of the twentieth century opposing during the Cold War. Meeropol and his fellow citizens were genuine Marxists who believed in universal human rights, equality, and dignity.

Meeropol saw a photograph of the lynching and it "haunted him for days" (Blair, 2012). The poem was a direct outpouring of his emotions, and Billie Holiday would make those same emotions come alive when she sang "Strange Fruit" in a nightclub. The photograph taken by Lawrence Beitler "would become the most iconic photograph of lynching in America," inspiring one of America's most iconic songs (Radio Diaries, 2010).

In an remarkable side story to the Shipp and Smith lynching, a third man had been scheduled to hang that same evening. His name was James Cameron, and he was only sixteen years old at the time. According to Cameron, the mob turned to him, and just as the noose was about to tighten, a voice spoke through the crowd saying, "He's innocent, he didn't do it" (cited in Radio Diaries, 2010). Cameron spent several years in jail but escaped the violence of the lynch mob, later writing about his experiences in an autobiography titled A Time of Terror.

Billie Holiday and Cafe Society

The success of Holiday's performance represents the empowerment of African-Americans and the will to persist and survive — much as Cameron had done. Cafe Society was a beacon of hope for America. It was an integrated nightclub, New York's only one of its kind and among the first in the nation (Margolick). The club's motto was an appropriately subversive phrase: "the wrong place for the Right people" (Phillips, 2007).

Holiday was certainly one of the right people. She took Meeropol's song and brought it to life. Doing so had a tremendous impact on her audience and on the future of African-American music as well. As Phillips (2007) observes, "The song was revolutionary — not only because of the explicit nature of the lyrics, but because it effectively reversed the black singer's relationship with a white audience." It could even have been considered risky for Holiday to perform the song, not only because of its obvious political connotations but also because audiences at the club expected lighthearted, standard numbers and were not prepared for a serious song to close the evening (Phillips, 2007). Despite any reservations, Holiday took command of the stage, singing about African-American realities in a world of institutionalized racism and state-sanctioned hatred. Her empowerment became a symbol for the future empowerment of all African-Americans.