EQ: How can music, literature, and history work together to create a deeper, emotional understanding of other’s experiences?

 Jim Crow Laws were a common term for legal segregation.  They were enacted after Reconstruction ended in the South and continued until the mid 1960’s.  Jim Crow Laws, which were inherently prejudice, carried with them the threat of violence.

 White people could beat African Americans with impunity (without punishment).  This was a method of social control.  The most extreme form of Jim Crow violence was lynching.

 Mobs often accused their victims of rape, which relieved the group of responsibility.  However, most of the victims were lynched for demanding civil rights, violating Jim Crow etiquette, or laws.  Lynchers were rarely arrested and rarely convicted.

 Billie Holiday’s grandfather was one of 17 children of a black Virginia slave and a white Irish plantation owner.  Billie’s mother was only 13 when Billie was born.  She worked as an errand girl at a “house of ill repute” during her girlhood.

 One evening at a club where Billie Holiday sang three nights a week, Café Society, a customer named Lewis Allen, who was a poet and schoolteacher, showed her a poem he had written.  The poem entitled, “Strange Fruit” described the lynching of African Americans in the South.  This was a poem that protested the racial brutality of the Jim Crow Laws.

 Billie Holiday with the help of Sonny White, her accompanist, changed it into a song.  It was given a special atmosphere at Café Society when it was sung.  Wait service stopped and all lights would be turned out except for a pin spot light on Billie Holiday.

By: Lewis Allen Sung by: Billie Holliday

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. 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. Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Pastoral Scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of Burning flesh.

Pastoral Scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of Burning flesh.

Here is the 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.

Here is the 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.