Strange Fruit
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"Strange Fruit" is a song written and composed by Abel Meeropol and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The lyrics were drawn from a poem by Meeropol, published in 1937.
Strange Fruit Commodore 1939
Meeropol cited this photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930, as inspiring his poem.
J. Thomas Shipp and Abraham S. Smith were two young African-American men who were murdered in a spectacle lynching by a group of thousands on August 7, 1930, in Marion, Indiana. They were kidnapped fr
Strange Fruit
…Fruit" originated as a protest poem against lynchings. In the poem, Abel Meeropol expressed his horror at lynchings of African Americans, inspired by Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. Meeropol published the poem under the title "Bitter Fruit" in…
Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith