Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit”
“Strange Fruit” was a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a white English teacher from
New York City, as a protest against the horrors of lynching, a practice that involved
mob-style execution without trial, most often by hanging, and most often of African
Americans. Thousands of African- Americans were lynched between the end of the
Civil War and the 1960s.
Blues and Jazz singer Billie Holiday recorded it as a song in 1939; it became her
best-selling record. With its harsh interpretation of the Jim Crow south, the song
experienced revitalization during the civil rights movement, and has been recorded by
many different artists in the years that followed.
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear a 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 magnolia, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is the 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.
Guided Reading Questions:
1.
What do the words “strange fruit” in
the song refer to?
2.
What kind of images does the song
create? How does it make you feel?
3.
What does she mean by “blood on
the leaves”?
4.
Does it strike you odd that she
mentions the “scent of magnolias”?
What is the purpose?
5.
What does the word “bitter” mean
and what is the effect as it is used in
the poem/song?
6.
What is the general mood created by
the poem/song? How does the music
contribute to the overall effect?
7.
Why might this song have gained
popularity during the civil rights
movement?
8.
What lines seem to relate to the Jim
Crow laws or the effects of the Jim
Crow laws?