Billie Holiday and the Tragic Song, Strange Fruit

On a cold March night in 1939, an unusual audience gathered at the club, Cafe Society, a new jazz club on West 4^th Street in Greenwich Village, New York City. They came because Café Society was an unusual club. It was the first racially integrated night club in the nation. Its owner, Barney Josephson, was an unusual man himself. When he had been in Europe he had been impressed by the political cabarets. They were alive with music and social freedom. But in the US, Jim Crow ruled and nothing like them existed. Josephson said about his club, “I wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front… there wasn’t, so far as I know, a place like it in New York or in the whole country.”

Josephson created such a place, Café Society, which he advertised as, “The Wrong Place for the Right People.” He abhorred the pretenses of the rich and named the club Café Society to taunt Clare Boothe Luce, a noted author and conservative who had coined the term to reference the wealthy and trendy. It was this club and that had people queued up to hear the unusually gifted Billie Holiday sing.

By the end of the evening, they would be stunned. black members of the audience were deeply moved, and whites were deeply troubled. Holiday’s last song of the night, Strange Fruit, delivered in her unique style would spread from the club to across the nation and the world. Now, Strange Fruit is recognized as the first anthem of the modern Civil Rights Movement. During her life, Billie Holiday was its voice.

On that evening in 1939, three unusual lives came together to create a flame that remains bright today; Billie Holiday, Barney Josephson, and the poet and composer who wrote Strange Fruit, Abel Meeropol. Holiday knew the power of the of the song’s lyrics. That evening she intended for the audience to feel it too. She arranged with the staff to cease service before her last song. There would be silence. She had told the lighting man to turn off all of the club’s lights and focus a single spot on her face. The club became dark and foreboding. All eyes were drawn to her expressive face. She then sang.

Southern trees bear 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 trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

At the end of the song, Holiday left the stage and a silent audience. She did not do an encore. After that, Holiday sang this song at the end every performance, in the dark, with a single spotlight. And those future audiences would react as the first had; blacks inspired to action, and whites disturbed by the truth. Abel Meeropol, the author of the song, said, “She gave a startling, most dramatic and effective interpretation of the song which could jolt the audience out of its complacency anywhere.”

Strange Fruit foreshadowed the rest of Holiday’s life and her early death.

Billie Holiday was born as Eleanora Fagan Gough on April 4^th, 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Sadie, was 19 years old and single. It is believed that her father was 16-year-old Clarence Halliday. He was an aspiring musician who would later become a successful jazz rhythm guitarist and would play with noted jazz musicians such the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra and musicians Charlie Turner and Louis Metcalf. During this period, he changed his name from Halliday to Holiday. As a father, Clarence was not successful. He was absent from Eleanora’s life, rarely visiting her mother or her.

At an early age, Eleanora and her mother moved to Baltimore where she would live until she was 15. But life was not easy. Because of poverty, Eleanora was occasionally sent to live with other people until her mother could afford to keep her. At age 9, Eleanora began to cut classes which landed her in The House of The Good Shepard, a home for troubled African American girls. She returned home after about 8 months, only to return at age 10, after being sexually assaulted.

Eleanora found comfort in music. Baltimore had a thriving jazz culture which became a powerful influence on her. As a child she had loved to sing and as she grew older her passion grew too. She listened to blues and jazz records, particularly blues singer Bessie Smith, whose powerful voice and gritty manner earned her the title “Empress Of The Blues”.  Eleanora sang along with the records. At her young age, she felt the blues deeply and needed to give voice to them.

In 1929, the Great Depression forced Eleanora’s mother to move them to New York City in search of work. This was a fateful move and a pivotal time.

New York City was the beating heart of African American culture. It had begun around 1910 when there was a labor shortage and northern businesses sent recruiters to the South to find labor. This created the Great Migration as hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved North. In New York City, the neighborhood of Harlem became the place to move to. Harlem, in the 1880s had been an upper-class white neighborhood but by 1900s it was over developed, and landlords were desperate to find tenants. The Great Migration provided the solution. Harlem became a thriving community and the center of African American culture. This became the period of the Harlem Renaissance, a historic time when all aspects of African American culture thrived. A Black Pride Movement evolved. Led by W.E.B Du Bois and others, the goal was to ensure that black actors, artists, musicians, dancers, writers, and others, received full credit for their efforts and in turn acknowledgement of African American culture. This led to some white America starting to appreciate the cultural contributions of black Americans.  The Great Depression was the beginning of the end for the Harlem Renaissance. It lingered for another decade, but as work disappeared so too did the black and white patrons that supported it.

It is that world that Eleanora entered. She was drawn to the small Harlem jazz clubs. In 1931, Eleanora, who had been working as a maid, decided to quit and devote herself to performing in the clubs. At first, she worked as a dancer. But one evening, she was asked to sing, and her career was born. Her earnings were small, her share of the combined tips the performers received. She had become a member of the Harlem Renaissance which would eventually evolve into the Swing Era.  At this time, Eleanora decided that she needed a stage name. She chose Billie from the popular actress Billie Dove, and Holiday from her father. It was a quiet nod to the father that was seldom there.  

Billie Holiday’s climb to fame and notoriety was because of her haunting voice and unique phrasing. Even though she was not technically trained and unable to read sheet music she gained attention and in 1933 began recording with the soon to be famous Benny Goodman. In 1936 Billie began collaborating with famed saxophonist Lester Young. Sound wise they were uniquely matched. They shared songs, switching back and forth from voice to sax. They became close friends and for a while lived together with her mother. It was Young who christened Billie, Lady Day, the name she is often remembered by today.

In 1937, Clarence Holiday died. While on tour in Texas, he developed a lung infection. The local white hospital would not admit him. Because Clarence was a World War 1 veteran, and his lungs had been damaged by mustard gas, he was able to enter the local Veterans Hospital. However, it was segregated, and he was placed in the Jim Crow ward where black veterans received poorer treatment than whites. Clarence quickly developed pneumonia and died. He was 39 years old.

When, on that evening in March 1939, with the room dark and Billie Holiday illuminated by a single spotlight, it was her father she thought of as she sang those wrenching words. Years later, in her autobiography, “Lady Sings the Blues” she would say, “It reminds me of how Pop died … But I have to keep singing it, not only because people ask for it, but because twenty years after Pop died, the things that killed him are still happening in the South.” He may not have been lynched but racism had killed him none the less.

Strange Fruit began life as the poem Bitter Fruit. It was written by Abel Meeropol, an unusual man. His parents were immigrants, Russian Jews, who had settled in the Bronx. It was there that Abel was born in 1903. He was an avid learner and graduated from De Witt Clinton High School. De Witt was an unusual school that produced a list of storied alumnae; James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, Richard Rodgers, Burt Lancaster, Stan Lee, Neil Simon, Richard Avedon and Ralph Lauren. After getting a B.A from City College NY, and a M.A. from Harvard, Meeropol returned to De Witt, to teach for 17 years. One of his students was James Baldwin. Throughout his life he was active in civil rights and social justice movements.

Meeropol wrote the poem, Bitter Fruit in response to a photograph on a postcard. It showed the 1930 lynching of two black teenagers, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. It was a dark August night in Marion Indiana and two battered black bodies hung from ropes strung from a massive tree. Beneath them a crowd of white people had gathered. Men, women, and children stood looking at the tree’s strange fruit. These people did not look upset or disturbed, some smiled. Meeropol said that the image had, “haunted him for days.”

Meeropol’s Dark Inspiration

Nine years earlier, 0n August 6, 1930, three black teenagers were jailed in Marion, Indiana. Tom Shipp, Abe Smith, and James Cameron had been arrested for shooting a white man, Claude Deeter, and raping his companion, Mary Ball. Deeter lingered for a day and during that time the news of the crimes swept through Indiana. Thousands from across the state converged on Marion and joined the crowd of locals who had gathered in the main square. Their mood was ugly, and a lynching was in the air.

However, not everyone in the crowd was there for violence. In later newspaper accounts it was noted that many were weeping and arguing against violence. The head of the Indiana NAACP, Katherine “Flossie” Bailey, lived in Marion, she saw what was happening and tried to intervene. She called the Sheriff, Jacob Campbell, and warned him that a mob was forming and would be coming to the jail.

When Deeter died someone waved his bloody shirt from a window of the Marion City building. This triggered the mob’s march on the jail. Sheriff Campbell was unable or unwilling to move the three teenagers to another town. But He had called in his deputies as reinforcements. However, after a short skirmish, the mob stormed the jail and dragged out the terrified teenagers one by one. Smith and then Shipp were beaten and then hung. Cameron was last and was beaten severely. Just as he was to be hung, someone in the crowd yelled that he was innocent, and he was released. He would later serve four years in jail for his involvement in the crimes. After a time, Mary Ball recanted her story of being raped.

After the lynching, a local photographer, Lawrence Beitler, was called over to photograph the mutilated bodies, slowly swaying at the ends of their ropes.  At the time, lynching photos displayed in newspapers and were often printed on postcards. Abel Meeropol had seen such a card.

After about a year, Meeropol set his poem to the music he had composed, and named the song, Strange Fruit. He had heard Billie Holiday sing and had written it with her in mind. Meeropol went to Café Society and played the song for Barney Josephson, knowing that he knew Holiday. Josephson agreed that Billie should sing it and introduced her to Meeropol and his song.

After that fateful night in 1939, Billie Holiday went to Columbia Records, with whom she had just released her immortal song, God Bless the Child. She tried to get the company to record Strange Fruit, but Columbia would not allow it. The song was “too controversial.”  Billie then went to Commodore recording. They agreed and within a short time the nation was listening to Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit. It was embraced by black Americans and civil rights activists. History would note that Strange Fruit was the first anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and Holiday was its voice.

Billie’s career continued to soar as she recorded other blues classics such as “T’ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do” and “My Man”. By the late 1940s she was a star with jazz and popular music audiences.  However, throughout her career, Billie had been outspoken about White Supremacy and was not afraid to call it out. She knew the danger she was in.

One audience member reported that, “At the end of Holiday’s performance, audience members would applaud until their hands hurt, while those less sympathetic would bitterly walk out the door.” Even though celebrated and adored by black Americans, activists, music lovers, a backlash was inevitable. Editorials in local and national papers attacked the song and the singer. Strange Fruit was blacklisted, and radio stations refused to play it.

Today we understand how her hard childhood and years of discrimination put her at risk for substance abuse. In 1941, Billie married James Monroe. Monroe, like many men in her life, exploited her for his own gain. Monroe drank and smoked opium and, not caring about the damage it would do, introduced the poppy to Billie. In 1945 her mother Sadie died. Billie’s reaction was to turn from opium to heroin for comfort. This was the weakness that her enemy, Harry Anslinger, the new Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was looking for.

Anslinger, was known as a virulent racist. He felt that narcotics made black people less willing to conform to their second-class status in America. He also believed that musicians who smoked marijuana created Satanic music. In 1946, he issued an order, forbidding Billie to perform Strange Fruit. She ignored him. Infuriated, he decided to destroy her. Using his authority and the agents under him, Anslinger began his vendetta.

In 1947, Anslinger set up a sting operation. His agents sold heroine to Holiday and then arrested her for use. Holiday was tried and given an 18-month prison sentence. When Billie wass released in 1948, Anslinger persuades federal authorities to deny reissuing Billie a cabaret performers license. In one stroke he ended Billie’s nightclub career. She loved performing in nightclubs and this was a terrible blow. Yet, she remained determined to continue singing and turned to concerts. Even though her concerts were sold out successes, Billie slipped deeper into the drug addiction.

The following years saw more successes for Billie. She continued to record, despite her deteriorating health and voice. In 1954, Billie went on a tour to Europe where she was met with acclaim. Sadly, her health worsened and her career began to faulter.

Billie Holiday gave her last performance in her beloved New York City, on May 25, 1959. A few days later, an exhausted and shriveled Holiday checked herself into New York City Hospital. She was seriously ill from her years of hard living. Her career was in shambles and her once brilliant voice had become a ghostly shadow of itself. The doctors immediately began giving her methadone to ease her withdrawal from heroin and treated her other maladies. Over time, she began to show signs of improvement and began gaining weight. All this time her friends had been visiting her and her room was decorated with flowers and messages of love. She knew how vulnerable she was and how vindictive Anslinger could be. Billie repeatedly told the hospital staff that “they are going to kill me.”

She was right. When hearing of Holiday’s hospitalization, Anslinger put into motion his revenge. He sent agents to the hospital where they planted heroin in her room, discovered it, and arrested her. They then handcuffed Billie to her bed. The agents then ordered the doctors to discontinue all treatments. Lying in painful position because of the handcuffs, alone, and surrounded by her enemies, Billie Holiday died a few days later.

Billie Holiday had become another victim of racist violence. It could be said that she took her place beside her father, Tom Shipp, and Abe Smith. Strange Fruit hanging from a poplar tree.