11. Billie Holiday’s famous “Strange Fruit” was originally a poem written by a school teacher. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons In 1936, Lewis Allan published an anti-lynching poem called “Strange Fruit” in the Teacher Union magazine. Lewis Allan was a pseudonym for Abel Meeropol, a Jewish school teacher from the Bronx. At the height of American lynchings, there were as many as 1,953 people killed by lynching a year. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, lynching had hit a peak, encouraged by the Jim Crow era, Reconstruction, and the Great Migration of black Southern workers to northern cities. Meeropol eventually set the poem to music. A few younger artists had picked up the song before, but it was Holiday who ultimately made it famous. She sang and recorded a version in 1939 that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Holiday and Meeropol both were met with high praise. “Strange Fruit”is one of the most iconic songs of the Civil Rights Movement and retains its power to this day 37
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