Strange Fruit

Elizabeth Kennedy

Steph Brown

ENG306

09/10/2016

Stranger Fruit

Strange Fruit, sent a message throughout history since Billie Holiday first performed it in 1939 at Café Society in New York City, with a solitary beam of light on her face, to a small, dead quiet crowd at the end of her set and well after the dinner service (Margolick, 1998). The song was published as a poem in the New York Times, originally titled “Bitter Fruit”, two years before it ever hit the stage. The poem and music was written by Abel Meeropol, a teacher and activist. Mr. Meeropol was spurned by the rage he felt when he saw a now famous photograph of a lynching in Marion, Indiana of Tom Shipp and Abe Smith, the ‘strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees’. America at the time was either collectively ignoring the inhumanity of lynching, and the implications it would have for the prevailing white supremacy, or actively engaging in the act as though it were a spectacle, an ordinary amusement. Billie Holiday did what Mr. Meeropol never could. She gave Strange Fruit a voice, indeed Thom and Abe got a voice and subsequently became a part of a much larger group of people who needed justice. The dead who by the power of song refused to be forgotten and the living who would demand equality. 

Ms. Holliday amplified a message to America, now and then, that injustice and violence against African Americans won’t be silenced, and should not be perpetuated or ignored. The lyrics, “Southern trees bear strange fruit,” specifically call out the south, even though the particular image that inspired Mr. Meeropol was taken in the decidedly mid-western state of Indiana. He mentions the south twice more calling to mind specific idealized country imagery when he mentions the magnolia, the official state flower of both Mississippi and Louisiana, and in the line, “Pastoral scene of the gallant south,”. Mr. Meeropol may be speaking to America, the image that inspired him was from Indiana, but the message is clearly meant for the south, where racism and violence have a synonymous history.

This song brought the crime of lynching to audiences regardless of their political involvement and put injustice at the forefront of the American conversation. Lynching has been used as a tool for punishment without due process for as long as America has been a free nation. A punishment that would range from hanging and shooting the victims to burning them at the stake or torture and mutilation. This communal act of violence was an effective and unfortunate method of terrorism against African Americans. In a 1971 interview Mr. Meeropol went on record to say, “I wrote 'Strange Fruit' because I hate lynching, and I hate injustice, and I hate the people who perpetuate it.” (Margolick, 1998) Billie Holliday took that stage and began to sing Strange Fruit, who’s lyrics so artfully expressed the idea to America that, African Americans are not dispensable, they see what is happening, you should to see it too. We should all want it to stop.

Mr. Meeropol’s juxtaposition of traditional southern imagery, combined with a harsh critique of the southern lifestyle, against the backdrop of graphic and poetic violence is a tongue in cheek appeal to logos, lacking in strong ethos, and still a powerful use of pathos. So Mr. Meeropol starts us off, “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root.”, implying that the bodies, the people dead and hanging are a different kind of fruit, that the blood of that fruit, the blood of African American’s has been spilling in the south for a long time and helped the south grow into what it is today. In the second verse he repeatedly uses graphic language depicting the state of the dead bodies while invoking images of a quaint beauty. Abel is being sardonic in his use of irony, effectively cutting through the ethos that the south demands. The third verse returns us to the metaphor of fruit, and the poem depicts what happens to the fruit, the dead bodies after time passes. Meeropol’s final statement in the verse is a huge appeal to pathos, that he starts building overtime he speaks about the bodies. He starts with the fruit, a normally inconsequential, even sweet object, and by the end the reader is stuck with the cold facts of lynching, the explicit details about the decomposition of the bodies, and the decomposition of race relations with every fruit that drops. Without leading the reader to any conclusion, simply opening their eyes and saying you can’t look away anymore, the bodies will continue to fall, and now you know exactly what they look like. 

Meeropol was just a regular dude. He was Jewish, and secretly a communist (Blaire, 2012) so his identity is really just the American identity. Ms. Holliday, as an African American lends her identity to the song. She brings an ethos that Meeropol, a white American, just couldn’t have contributed. The way she uses her voice, performs the song in itself is the ethos of the piece. When she stood on that stage at the end of her set, knowing that the audience wouldn’t leave before the last song, closing her eyes while she sings, and the singular light on her face in an otherwise entirely dark night club put her in a position of power over the audience. She’s ignoring them in favor of soaking in the emotion of the song, she doesn’t need to see them. Holliday needs them to see her as she is affected by the words, to see her not being vulnerable, not being afraid to sing this song under threat of violence (Margolick, 1998) the sheer audacity of her choice to sing the song at all is testament enough to her ethos. It’s a very sad and graphic song and Holliday doesn’t shy away from that, she croons along to the words lending to the pathos, calling attention to the logos with sad snarky expression, and acting as the commanding messenger. Plus Billie Holiday has a baller voice. 

The protest song, and art as a means of protest in general, can be hard to correlate to change in terms of numbers or literal legislation. The impact however, especially in the case of Strange Fruit, is obvious in hindsight. The song has been called by many “the first great protest song” (Margolick, 1998), has sold more than a million copies (Sanburn, 2011), is named the song of the century by Time Magazine (Sanburn, 2011), was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978 (Astaire, 2016) , and has been covered, sampled and employed by several artists across all media landscapes. Nina Simone covered this song at the height of the civil rights movement (Linskey, 2011), a nod to the anthem as effectual and necessary to remember in all times of racial strife. Strange Fruit and it’s inception is a great analogy for what the song is intending it’s audience to hear. This is our problem, this is our song, this is our history, and we can stop it from being our future.

Works Cited

Margolick, David, and Hilton Als. Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights. N.p.: Harper Perennial, n.d. Print.

Sanburn, Josh. "ALL-TIME 100 Songs." Time. Time Inc., 21 Oct. 2011. Web. 14 Sept. 2016. references an originally printed Time article

Lynskey, Dorian. "Strange Fruit: The First Great Protest Song." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 2011. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.

Margolick, David. "Strange Fruit." Vanity Fair, 1998. Web. 29 Sept. 2016.

Blaire, Elizabeth “The Strange Story Of The Man Behind 'Strange Fruit'" NPR. NPR, n.d. 2012 Web. 29 Sept. 2016.

By Jessica Wohl and Judann Pollack - 15 Minutes Ago. "African-Americans: Representations in Advertising." Advertising Age AdAge Encyclopedia RSS. N.p., 2003. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.

Astaire, By Fred. "GRAMMY Hall Of Fame." The GRAMMYs. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.

Moore, Edwin. "Strange Fruit Is Still a Song for Today | Edwin Moore." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 2010. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.

"State Symbols." State Symbols. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.

"Magnolia." State Symbols USA. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.

Gibson, Robert A. "The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United ..." Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

"History of Lynchings." NAACP. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

"Lynching Statistics." For 1882-1968. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.