Strange Fruit – Billie Holiday – a song that exposes the racism of the past.

Posted on by Opher

When Billie Holiday recorded and sang this song it was a dangerous thing to do. This was back in 1939.

The song has a haunting melody but deals with the terrible lynchings that were a regular feature in the Southern States of America. Nearly 2000 people met their end this way. Three quarters of them were black. There was no trial and they were sometimes for the smallest crimes or even hearsay.

The strange fruit were the bodies of the poor victims left dangling as a warning.

These were the racist days of the Ku Klux Klan. The grinning faces of the arrogant men, so eager to be photographed next to the crime they had committed is testimony to the awfulness of those times.

We should all play this song and reflect on the terrible nature of those crimes in the past so that they may never be repeated.

Racism in any form – white on black, black on white, brown on yellow – is simply wrong.

“Strange Fruit”

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

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 the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

Nina Simone not on did her version but also spoke about it.

Terrorism – Parallel to the Southern American terror of the Ku Klux Klan and the Civil Rights Movement.

Posted on by Opher

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The aim of the terrorists is to impose their narrow view on the population, create fear and vent their hatred.

Back in the 1960s the black population of the Southern parts of the United States were subjugated through terror. There were beatings, shootings and killing.

At night men in robes and hoods would ride through a community and place a burning cross in front of any house that had someone who was getting uppity. It was a chilling warning. If unheeded fire-bombing, shooting and murder would result.

The people were terrified.

But after a while brave members of the community began to raise their heads and demand justice. Many of these were shot or lynched. More came along to take up the cause until there were too many marching for the terror to work anymore.

I salute the bravery of those early black activists and the white activists who came down from the North to support them.

Here’s to Martin Luther King, Medgar Evans, Michael Schwerner, James Earl Chaney and Andrew Goodman and all the hundreds of others who died in that struggle.

The virulent racists of the South were defeated just as the hate-filled Islamic jihadists will be.