Strange Fruit

One of my favorite singers is Billie Holiday. She sang this poem made into a song in the late 1930s and early 40s. The song exposes the brutality of racism in America, and doesn’t leave any room for more words.

In 1939 a journalist of the New York Post described the song as "the anthem and the anger of the exploited people of the south, if they ever got to voice it." We aren't hanging in the trees (just yet). But we are cut from the tree of life...rotting on the ground. Picked off by bullets from cops and then told to go rest (administrative leave). We haven't come much farther today.

"Southern trees bear 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 trees to drop. Here is a strange and bitter crop."

To listen to the song: https://youtu.be/Web007rzSOI