Early 1939. The lights go down at New York’s Cafe Society. The waiters hush the drinking audience, a single small spotlight shines on her face. And Billy Holiday begins to sing. “Southern trees, bears strange fruit blood on the leaves, blood at the root.” The song ends, and the spotlight goes out. Billy leaves the stage, the room is silent until one patron, then another, then finally the entire room begins to applaud. They rise for a standing ovation, but Billy doesn’t return for encores or vows.
Billy would repeat this performance many times in her last two decades, albeit only in clubs that would tolerate such a song. As with all forms of protest, Strange Fruit met with resistance. Columbia record refused to record it. So, she went to an independent label. It took months for radio stations to muster the courage to play it.
But Strange Fruit eventually grew to become more than an anthem on the horrors of torture and lynching in Jim Crow America. Leonard Feather hailed it as the first significant protest in words and music, “the first unmuted cry against racism,” Stud Turkels proclaimed it “a declaration of war. The beginning of the civil rights movement.” First sung 16 years before Rosa parks refused to yield her seat on a Montgomery Alabama bus. And as one Southern civil rights worker stated , “If Billy Holiday didn’t light the fuse, she unquestionably fed the flame.”
This episode of “Soundtrack to the Struggle” was written and produced by Ron Adkins. Executive Producers Dennis Green and George Dorman. Hosted by Hollis Monroe.
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