Strange Fruit

"Strange Fruit" is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939.
Written by the teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem, it exposed American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. In fact, the "Strange Fruit" which is spoken in the song, is the body of a black man hanging from a tree. The symbolic and emotional power of the lyrics derives from the contrast between the image evoked by a traditional rural South and the brutal reality of lynchings and racism. Such lynchings had occurred chiefly in the South but also in all other regions of the United States. Meeropol set it to music and with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York venues, including Madison Square Garden.