The United States Vs. Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was a constant target of the U.S. government and FBI between 1939-1959 after her release of the song “Strange Fruit.” Written and composed by Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan), “Strange Fruit” is a protest song about the lynchings of Black Americans during the Jim Crow era that ended up playing an important role in the civil rights movement. Holiday had put it in her contract that she would be performing this protest song every time she performed.

Originally written as a protest poem in 1937, Abel was inspired to write it after seeing a photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. The song is very clear about its theme.

“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…”

There are several stories about how Billie Holiday came to sing the song, but what we know for sure is that she first performed it in 1939 at Cafe Society, an integrated nightclub in Greenwich Village. Her continued performance of the song made her a target, and she had a string of arrests for drug possession. She was ultimately silenced by the continuous drug offenses and two decades of racial persecution, and was even arrested in her hospital bed for possession of narcotics.

Learn more about the history of this song via the Education Department of the Kennedy Center!

As part of her legal sentence, by having her cabaret card revoked, she was permanently banned from singing in venues that served alcohol. After spending ten months in federal prison for drug charges, she made her comeback and sold out Carnegie Hall in 1948.

The History of "Strange Fruit"