Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit


Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
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
The 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

Composed by Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan)
Originally sung by: Billie Holiday


"Strange Fruit" began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol,
a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, about the
lynching of two black men. He published under the pen
name Lewis Allan. Meeropol and his wife adopted Robert
and Michael, sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were
convicted of espionage and executed by the United States.

Meeropol wrote "Strange Fruit" to express his horror at
lynchings after seeing Lawrence Beitler's photograph
of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in
Marion, Indiana. He published the poem in 1936 in
The New York Teacher, a union magazine.
Though Meeropol/Allan had often asked others
(notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music,
he set Strange Fruit to music himself.
The song gained a certain success as a protest song in
and around New York. Meeropol, his wife, and black
vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square
Garden. Barney Josephson, the founder of Cafe Society
in Greenwich Village, New York's first integrated nightclub,
heard the song and introduced it to Billie Holiday. Holiday
performed the song at Cafe Society in 1939. She said that
singing it made her fearful of retaliation. Holiday later
said that because the imagery in "Strange Fruit" reminded
her of her father, she persisted in singing it. The song
became a regular part of Holiday's live performances.