Lady Day released the racially inflammatory protest song “Strange Fruit” to widespread controversy. Some people think it ultimately killed her.
A 23-year-old Billie Holiday approached the microphone at West 4th’s Cafe Society in New York City in March 1939 to perform her last song of the evening. The waiters stopped serving her at her request, and the room became dark—the only light in it being her face from a spotlight. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees,” she sung quietly in her unpolished and raw voice.
The spotlight went out after Holiday was done. The stage was deserted when the lights came back on. She had vanished. And there was no encore, per her request. This was Holiday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit,” a song she would resolutely sing for the next twenty years until her premature death at forty-four.
While Holiday is credited with popularizing and elevating “Strange Fruit” to the status of art, the poem and song were originally written by Abel Meeropol, a Bronx-based Jewish communist teacher and civil rights activist.
Who inspired him? Meeropol discovered a photograph from 1930 that showed two Black men being lynched in Indiana. He wrote about the visceral sight that tormented him for days.
“Strange Fruit” was first published by Meeropol in a teachers union newspaper. He then turned the article into a song and gave it to a nightclub owner, who played it for Holiday.
The song reminded Holiday of her father
Holiday was moved to tears when she heard the song’s lyrics because, in addition to being a Black American, they brought to mind her father, who passed tragically at the age of 39 from a deadly lung condition after being turned away from a hospital due to his race.
Holiday knew she had to play “Strange Fruit,” even if it didn’t enjoy her because of the sad memories it brought up. In her memoirs, she referred to the song as “reminding me of how Pop died.” “But I have to keep singing it because, even after 20 years, the things that killed Pop are still happening in the South, not just because people ask me to.”
The protest song ultimately led to Holiday’s demise
Black America and civil rights activists welcomed “Strange Fruit,” but the predominantly white nightclub crowd reacted differently. Those in the crowd who were not as sympathetic would leave the show with a bitter taste in their mouths, while others would cheer until their hands hurt from watching Holiday play.
Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was one person who was committed to keeping Holiday quiet. A well-known bigot, Anslinger thought that marijuana-smoking Black jazz performers were making music for the devil and that narcotics drove Black people to cross lines in American culture.
Holiday refused to comply with Anslinger’s request that she not perform “Strange Fruit,” which led him to plot her assassination. Acknowledging Holiday’s drug usage, he had a few of his men sell her heroin in order to frame her. She spent the following year and a half in prison after it was discovered that she was using the narcotic.
Federal officials declined to restore Holiday’s cabaret performer’s license after her release in 1948. Her days of lovingly frequenting nightclubs were past.
She played to packed houses at Carnegie Hall, demonstrating her unwavering resolve to persevere, but the ghosts of her rough upbringing—which included working at a brothel with her mother, a prostitute—resurfaced, and she started abusing heroin once more.
Holiday admitted herself to a hospital in New York City in 1959. The singer was an emaciated version of herself, suffering from decades of drug and alcohol abuse, heart and lung issues, and liver cirrhosis. Her voice had become harsh and shriveled from heartbreak.
Anslinger, who was still determined to ruin the singer, had his men take her to the hospital and shackle her to her bed. Holiday had been improving gradually, but Anslinger’s soldiers would not allow medical professionals to treat her any more. Days later, she passed away.
“Strange Fruit” was declared ‘song of the century’
Holiday left behind a long legacy in the jazz and pop music industries despite her terrible end. She was recently inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame and received 23 Grammy Awards posthumously.
“Strange Fruit” is one of Holiday’s most iconic songs, even though she is known for many others. It enabled her to take what was initially a political protest song and turn it into a piece of art that millions of people could hear.
1999 saw Time name “Strange Fruit” as the “song of the century.”
