The song “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday is very simple and meaningful. Before it was a song, “Strange Fruit” was a poem written by a Jewish high school teacher from the Bronx by the name of Abel Meeropol. Strange Fruit was recorded in 1939, the same year as Gone With the Wind, a film that embodied contemporary condescension toward blacks and black performers. Billie Holiday's intent when first singing this was to expose the harsh truth of the racism in the southern states. Even after the Civil War had freed all the slaves in America, many African Americans still worked as slaves because they had no other option. Plantation owners would give them shelter, food or land in exchange for labor. Although the slaves weren't bound to the plantations, they still stayed and worked because they didn't know anything else. Not much had changed in reality. Blacks were still slaves in a way and they continued to be treated like animals as the poem describes. The author Abel Meeropol was hoping to make it known how badly black people were really treated. He wanted enough people to take notice so that it would spark a change or revolution that fought for the rights of African Americans. I believe this piece to be almost commercial in an informative way because the harshness of the poem is needed to send a strong informative message and make a change. It helps provide a visual picture of what often happened in the south when stated that “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”. Lewis Allen tries to portray what is going on by making it different from
the usual news reports and broadcasts. He does this by comparing it to the natural land and emphasizing how gruesome the scenery...
