"Strange Fruit"

I hadn’t thought about the song in a while, not even over these last months of shootings and the marches of Black Lives Matter, but here it suddenly came again – out of a jazz mix:

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit

 Blood on the leaves and blood at the root"

It’s a touchstone of American history, to hear again as we might read again Elie Wiesel’s “Night” – to remember, to never forget.

"Black body swinging in the Southern breeze.

Strange Fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

I remember – perhaps ten years ago now – talking to Larry Gossett, King County Councilman (for a weekly broadcast) - about the first day he actually saw the words to “Strange Fruit” - - he was a UW student, active in the Black Student Union:

["WHEN I HEAR THAT SONG NOW, OR REFERENCES TO IT, IT ALWAYS REMINDS ME OF THE SAME THING – THE HORRIFIC HISTORY OF LYNCHING IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.  AND PARTICULARLY IN THIS POST 9/11 ERA WHEN I’VE BEEN IN COUNCIL MEETINGS LISTENING TO MY COLLEAGUES TALK ABOUT HOW INCENSED THEY WERE ABOUT THIS FIRST ACT OF TERROR ON THE SHORES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.  AND HERE I AM COMING FROM A PEOPLE WHOSE  WHOLE HISTORY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WAS AN EXPERIENCE OF UTTER TERROR.”]

"Pastoral scene of the gallant south.

  The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth."

A New York writer, Abe Meeropol, wrote the song, but Billie Holliday made it her signature, her show stopper, her message wherever she sang:

"Scent of Magnolia sweet and fresh.

 And the sudden smell of burning flesh."

And it became for Larry Gossett, and others dedicated to change but also to remembering a bitter history, a dark anthem that told a story of fear, and of a debased reality that took more than two centuries of American life to overcome:

[“…BETWEEN 1890 AND 1920 THERE WAS ABOUT 28-HUNDRED LYNCHINGS IN THE THIRTEEN CONTIGUOUS STATES OF THE SOUTH, ALL OF THEM AFRICAN AMERICANS, OFTEN BECAUSE OF SOME SLIGHT TO A WHITE PERSON AND IT WAS DONE, YOU KNOW – TAKEN TO A TREE AND HUNG -  ALL TO REMIND THEM, AND ALL OF THE OTHER PEOPLE THAT HEARD ABOUT THE LYNCHING – THAT YOU ARE INFERIOR PEOPLE AND YOU ARE NEVER TO CHALLENGE THE SUPERIOR PEOPLE, WHITE FOLKS IN THIS COMMUNITY.  SO THAT SONG REFLECTS THAT  EXPERIENCE REALLY WELL.”]

When I hear "Strange Fruit" now - it's not as often - I’ll sit.  To listen again.
Dark as it is, it reminds as well of the long road we travel to make reality of our promises.

"Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop."

 -- Abe Meeropol, 1937