Resource: Strange Fruit: A Song Born of Protest

Print Background Essay

In 1939, a song performed by the legendary jazz sstinger Billie Holiday left an indelible stamp on a movement that had begun decades earlier in an attempt to eradicate brutality against African Americans.

Beginning in 1912, organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lobbied Congress in an effort to pass an anti-lynching bill. The bill was spurred by the horrific acts of the Jim Crow era, when white supremacy groups like the Ku Klux Klan assaulted and murdered thousands of African Americans.

More than 200 bills were introduced, with activists like Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois speaking out forcefully in support of them. Three bills passed the House of Representatives, but senators from the South blocked all of them. The anti-lynching movement, which had evolved into a well-organized campaign by the late 1930s, became an issue that galvanized people of color and their white allies. At the same time, many African Americans, refusing to live under segregation and the continued threat of violence, began moving to the North in search of political and economic opportunities.

In the first half of the 20th century, African Americans moved from the South to the North in a wave known as the Great Migration, settling in places like Chicago, Detroit and New York City. The New York City neighborhood of Harlem became a haven for artists like Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Billie Holiday. The resulting Harlem Renaissance movement produced some of the most influential American thinkers and artists in the nation’s history. This movement led to extraordinary collaborations between artists and intellectuals, and its effect on American culture was both powerful and lasting.

The power of the movement manifested itself in Billie Holiday’s performance of Strange Fruit at the integrated Café Society nightclub in Greenwich Village, New York. The song, a chilling account of an African-American man being lynched in the South, united the talents of Billie Holiday and the song's composer, Abel Meeropol. Its performance connected the political left, pop culture and civil-rights advocates at a crucial time, and made Strange Fruit a unifying anthem for those opposed to the brutality inflicted on the African-American community throughout the United States. Recording this song of protest is often believed to be Holiday’s most important professional accomplishment.

Print Questions for Discussion

• Based on what you heard and saw in the video, what do you think the line, “Southern trees bear strange fruits,” in the song Strange Fruit, means?
• How does the video illustrate the message of Strange Fruit? Explain your answer.
• How was the song Strange Fruit used in the anti-lynching movement? Was it successful? Do you think it had an important impact on the Civil Rights movement? Why or why not