Women’s History Month just ended, but every year, more heroines are left unheralded than featured.
Billie Holiday, aka “Lady Day,” brought some sunlight to one of the darkest eras of modern American history. You know, that American history they keep trying to erase. Born Eleanora fa*gan Gough, Holiday made a statement that bears rehearsal and rethinking. She once said, “we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.”
That statement is more relevant today than most of us realize.
Holiday was a talented singer who broke through the color barrier with considerable force. She sang the blues in a classy, connective and convincing fashion. When she hit the stage and the spotlight fell over her, you never knew what to expect. In conversations, she would admit that she was bored of singing the same song the same way night after night.
That need to entertain herself while entertaining others made Holiday worth the price of admission at any cost. She was a legend. Sadly, her addiction to the drugs that eventually quieted her voice forever was too much for her. In fact, by the time she had had enough, the effects had silenced one of the most extraordinary vocal talents in our history. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit,” she sang.
It was the same fruit Ida B. Wells chronicled in her 1892 report, Southern Horrors, and the same fruit W.E.B. Du Bois alludes to in “Of the Coming of John” – “And the world whistled in his ears.” Holiday, a Black Catholic, continues her sorrowful song: “Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”
According to Biography Online, “In March 1939, a 23-year-old Billie Holiday walked up to the mic at West 4th's Cafe Society in New York City to sing her final song of the night.” Per her request, the waiters stopped serving and the room went completely black, save for a spotlight on her face. And then, softly in her raw and emotional voice, she sang: “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 …”
When Holiday heard the lyrics, she was deeply moved by them – not only because she was a Black American but also because the song reminded her of her father, who died at 39 from a fatal lung disorder after being turned away from a hospital because he was Black. Because of the painful memories it conjured, Holiday didn’t enjoy performing “Strange Fruit,” but knew she had to.
“It reminds me of how Pop died,” she said of the song in her autobiography. “But I have to keep singing it, not only because people ask for it, but because 20 years after Pop died, the things that killed him are still happening in the South.”
Strange fruit emanated from a peculiar place.
Although Wells, Du Bois, and other Black leaders laid the foundation for the song, its penman was the son of Russian immigrants. Lewis Allan, published under the pseudonym Abel Meeropol, wrote an article called “Bitter Fruit” for publication in a magazine for unionized teachers. Parenthetically, Meeropol was the DeWitt Clinton High School classmate of Countee Cullen.
Cullen was a brilliant poet, playwright and novelist in his own right. The lesson: Integration and diversity matter! In its infancy, “Strange Fruit” originated as a protest poem against the lynchings that set the South ablaze in terror. In the poem, Meeropol expressed his horror at these violent acts against African Americans, inspired by Lawrence Beitler’s photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Ind.
The problem of lynchings and hangings, both public and covert, was magnified in America because of Beitler’s photography. Holiday’s vocal version gave the injustice of the killings more context and conviction.
“When Holiday finished, the spotlight turned off,” Biography Online continues. “When the lights came back on, the stage was empty. She was gone. And per her request, there was no encore. This was how Holiday performed ‘Strange Fruit,’ which she would determinedly sing for the next 20 years until her untimely death at the age of 44.”
Lights down! Quit Playin’!
Vincent L. Hall is an author, activist, award-winning columnist and lifelong Drapetomaniac.
