Southeast Missourian

'Odd Beauty, Strange Fruit: Poems' explores 'unusual people in uncommonly difficult circumstances'

The poems in Susan Swartwout's recent book, "Odd Beauty, Strange Fruit: Poems," were inspired by the author's upbringing in the deep South, as well as childhood moves to many cities. Swartwout not ...
The Cheat Sheet

Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ Was Written by a Communist School Teacher

Music legend Billie Holiday is regarded as one of the most soulful American singers of the ‘50s. But her most powerful song, “Strange Fruit,” put Holiday on the federal government’s hit list, and ...
Fast Company

Why Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ still echoes injustice

Singer Billie Holiday records her penultimate album, Lady in Satin, at the Columbia Records studio in December 1957 in New York City. [Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images] Abel Meeropol, a New ...
Grub Street

Restaurant Learns the Hard Way Why You Never Name a Cocktail ‘Strange Fruit’

Earlier this year, the owners of a PR firm discovered, via a social-media blowback, that calling a company “Strange Fruit PR” is a seriously bad idea, since the poem and Billie Holiday song to which ...
Yahoo

Decades after Billie Holiday’s death, ‘Strange Fruit’ is still a searing testament to injustice – and of faithful solidarity with suffering

Billie Holiday records her penultimate album, 'Lady in Satin,' in New York in 1957. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Today, Holiday is revered as one of the most influential musical artists of all ...
The Cheat Sheet

Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ Lyrics Made the Government Hunt Her Down for 20 Years

Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit' lyrics were controversial to some and powerful to others. The song was Holiday's way of protesting the lynching of Black people during the Jim Crow era, and it angered ...
PBS

The story behind Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’

The mesmerizing performance from Academy Award-nominated actress and singer Andra Day in “The United States Vs. Billie Holiday” has revived interest in the hauntingly beautiful and controversial song ...
Phys.org

Strange fruit: How Billie Holiday's performance of the anti-lynching song politicized Black consciousness

Billie Holiday's recording of the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" has stirred and haunted generations of listeners. A new article in the Journal of African American History, titled "Professional ...
Newsweek

The Story Behind ‘Strange Fruit,’ the Song That Inspired ‘The United States Vs. Billie Holiday’

Hulu's The United States vs. Billie Holiday opens with titles stating a historic fact: "In 1937, a Bill to finally ban the lynching of African-Americans was considered by the Senate. It did not pass." ...
Time

My Father Wrote ‘Strange Fruit.’ The Capitol Rioters Had a Lot in Common With the Lynch Mobs That Inspired That Song

Robert Meeropol is the younger son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the adopted son of Abel and Anne Meeropol. His is the Founder and former Executive Director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, and ...
Religion News Service

Decades after Billie Holiday’s death, ‘Strange Fruit’ is still a searing testament to injustice – and of faithful solidarity with suffering

(The Conversation) — Sixty-five years ago, on July 17, 1959, Billie Holiday died at Metropolitan Hospital in New York. The 44-year-old singer arrived after being turned away from a nearby charity ...