Strange Fruit
As BLACK HISTORY MONTH comes to a close, this is a reminder that while the world celebrates moments that feel like progress, the truth is, freedom still hasn’t arrived for many of us.
Black and brown communities are still fighting for liberation.
The LGBTQ+ community faces increasing attacks on our rights.
Palestine is not free.
Puerto Rico is still recovering.
Native Americans are still protecting their land.
Japan is grappling with tragedy.
This isn’t just about us. This is about all of us.
Strange Fruit is a haunting reminder of the brutal history we carry and the parallels to what so many communities still face today. As a queer Black artist, this song feels like a weight I must bear and a truth I need to share—especially now.
While some celebrate superficial progress, let us not lose sight of the ongoing struggles. Let us stay vigilant, resist, and remember.
I hope this song encourages reflection and solidarity. May we keep fighting for true freedom—for everyone, everywhere.
“The lyrics are hard to read and even harder to listen to. Some listeners who had come to drink, dance, and have a good time — not to hear about lynched boys “swinging in the southern breeze” — stormed out. Some in the audience cried because of the simple but poignant contrast between the “scent of magnolias” and the “sudden smell of burning flesh.” Some cried because I spoke the truth in the song and they didn’t want to hear the truth; others because they needed someone, anyone to tell the truth. Still others cried because it was sad to think of any mother’s son hanging like fruit from a tree.”
- Billie Holiday
Poster for the NAACP anti-lynching campaign, 1922.
Front page of the Dec. 12, 1931, edition of the Baltimore Afro-American.
Between 1882 and 1964 at least 3,400 blacks were lynched in the United States. “Strange Fruit” is a euphemism for the lynched bodies of African Americans hanging and swaying from trees. Strange Fruit is also the name of one of the most powerful protest songs ever written by a Jewish school teacher named Abel Meeropol after seeing a gruesome photograph of the lynched and hanging bodies of two young black men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. He dealt with his emotions by writing the poem “Bitter Fruit,” which was published in 1937 in ‘The New York Teacher,’ a publication of the teachers union. In 1939, after seeing Billie Holiday perform at an interracial nightclub in Greenwich Village, New York, Meeropol showed Billie the poem and a version that he had put into music and had been sung by his wife, Anne.
Lynching Postcard
Rope used to lynch Matthew Williams, Dec. 1931