"[21] In an attempt to have a two-thirds majority in the Senate that would break the filibusters by the southern senators, anti-racism activists were encouraged to mail copies of "Strange Fruit" to their senators. In our phone interview in September 2020, Robert Meeropol spoke to me for over an hour, with tremendous fluidity and frankness, about the circumstances surrounding his parents’ execution and how he and his brother were adopted by the Meeropols. Strange Fruit If you listen carefully to the lyrics of Billy Holiday's version of the Abel Meeropol song, "Strange Fruit, " you will realise it is a protest song about the lynching of African Americans in the Southern United States.Black victims are portrayed as "strange fruit, " as their dead bodies hang from trees, rotting in the sun, swaying to and fro in the wind, and being eaten by crows. Abel Meeropol's biography and life story. For 30 years he has been a progressive activist, author and speaker. The poem specifically focuses on the horrific lynchings that took place primarily across the American South, in which black individuals were brutally tortured and murdered—and often strung up from trees to be gawked at—by white supremacists. As lefty public school teachers, the Meeropols were both heavily involved in the New York City Teachers Union. While Hollywood isn’t going to tell the real story of the Meeropols anytime soon, if I were to make that TV series, I would open it on a party scene in the front parlor of a Brooklyn brownstone. With Dorothy Thigpen, Milton Gabler, Farah Jasmine Griffin, C.T. Meeropol later recalled how the photograph "haunted me for days" and inspired the writing of the poem, Strange Fruit. It made me feel as if I had just brushed aside half a century’s worth of dust and discovered a part of my own past. It protests the lynching of Black Americans, with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees. “Strange Fruit” This anti-lynching poem was written by Abel Meeropol, a teacher, songwriter, and member of the American Communist Party. The Bernie Sanders campaigns understood that. Many people know that the man who wrote the song was inspired by a photograph of a lynching. ‘Strange Fruit’ has often been described as a dirge-like ballad. I actually wouldn’t approach the trial or the appeals much at all. I’d stroll around that material, which I believe has been over examined and lost much of its humanity. The symbolic tree has blood on the leaves and in its root. Under constant threat of persecution, the New York City left was necessarily close knit. [9] Holiday first performed the song at Café Society in 1939. While Abel Meeropol was a communist, “Beloved Comrade” belongs to no faction and has been sung in solidarity by many left-wing movements. Mary Filippo began in 2004 to audit economics classes in the hope that she could “learn something about globalization. In 1945, the Meeropols, fearful of being blacklisted like Alice Citron and so many of their fellow Teachers Union members, left their teaching jobs and took off for Los Angeles. But we also need to do our own storytelling, to make creative narrative works that mythologize our own past. For his impertinence, Abel got written up by the Party functionary. Tel: 212-691-2555. [20] Holiday's 1939 version of the song was included in the National Recording Registry on January 27, 2003. There was always a stream of writers and artists and performers coming and visiting. In October 1939, Samuel Grafton of the New York Post said of "Strange Fruit", "If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise. Over the centuries, humans have survived tragedy through the incredible stoicism of not moving, of standing one’s ground, of resisting, of engaging in tremendous creativity. Robert and Michael were raised in a loving, quirky, left-wing home. Southern trees bear a strange fruit, My story would focus not on the government’s case against the Rosenbergs, nor Bloch’s defense. 1) ‘Strange Fruit’ was inspired by lynchings that took place in 20th-century America The song was first written as a poem and published under Abel Meeropol’s pseudonym, Lewis Allan, in 1937. It was an attack on the perpetrators of lynching.” It was also in this period that Abel Meeropol wrote the poem, “Beloved Comrade.” My story would begin with the Christmas party at the Du Bois’ and end with Robert and Michael being reunited with the Meeropols, after they had won their legal battle. He barely escaped blacklisting by changing jobs, moving around the country, and lying and obfuscating when interrogated by government agents. Michael and Robert Rosenberg went to live with the Meeropols in January of 1954. Vivian. [9][10] Though Meeropol had asked others (notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music, he set "Strange Fruit" to music himself. [9] It was recorded on April 20, 1939. The song was recorded and performed by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone among other artists. The main themes of the poem “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol are racism and violence. So, he met them, he liked them, and he said, “OK, you can adopt them!”. (15 Tracks That Changed The World) CD", "100 Songs of the South | accessAtlanta.com", "Strange Fruit: A protest song with enduring relevance", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strange_Fruit&oldid=997228600, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 30 December 2020, at 15:36. He published it in a union publication in 1937 and then set it to music. Through this daisy chain of personal ties, the Meeropols were ultimately able to adopt Robert and Michael. It’s easier to think of the story as a Coen Brothers film (I’m seeing John Turturro and Frances McDormand cast as the Meeropols) than as history. After being blacklisted in the 1940s and fired from her teaching job, Citron went on to work as Shirley Graham Du Bois’ personal secretary. Thankfully though Abel Meeropol, a American songwriter, took the poem and turned it into something very distinguished. She said that singing it made her fearful of retaliation but, because its imagery reminded her of her father, she continued to sing the piece, making it a regular part of her live performances. This material has been combed over in countless books and articles. Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” (1939) “Strange Fruit” was written by Abel Meeropol, a white English teacher from New York City, as a protest against the horrors of lynching. DSA understands that. If you didn’t know their back story, they would appear much like the other “red diaper babies” of their generation—that coterie of diehards who protested Vietnam, kept the faith through the dire neoliberal period, and even sent their kids to socialist summer camp. It encouraged cultural work and supported artists through organizations like John Reed Clubs for writers and the Pierre Degeyter Club for musicians. The photograph helped inspire the poem and song "Strange Fruit" written by Abel Meeropol -- and performed around the world by Billie Holiday. In our current moment of widespread helplessness, when narrativizing our past would be a therapeutic and politically expedient practice, left-wing history is instead being rewritten by liberals like Aaron Sorkin. It was very artistic. Columbia gave Holiday a one-session release from her contract so she could record it; Frankie Newton's eight-piece Café Society Band was used for the session. "Strange Fruit" is a song recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, written by Abel Meeropol and published in 1937. It’s even been fictionalized by E.L. Doctorow in The Book of Daniel (a beautiful example of navel-gazing Sorkinesque white guy writing if there ever was one). It covers a range of contemporary themes: children separated from parents, the political persecution of dissidents, and social justice warriors doing battle against a racist, xenophobic, increasingly fascistic America. [16] Holiday sang "Strange Fruit" for him a cappella, and moved him to tears. He wrote songs for left-wing reviews that were supported by or in the orbit of the Party. New York NY 10001-5304 Robert Meeropol remembers Malvina Reynolds singing “Little Boxes” on their living room sofa. ... Jewish schoolteacher and union activist from New York City named Abel Meeropol, who was outraged after seeing a photograph of a horrific lynching in a civil-rights magazine. Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday song meaning, lyric interpretation, video and chart position. A Land Grant in Maine: The Gift That’s Been Giving Since 1767, Let’s Get Serious About Inequality and Socialism, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The song consists of 12 lines comparing a southern idyll (“Pastoral scene of the gallant South”) with a brutal lynching (“The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth”). Robert Meeropol recalls: They were at this study group reading Lenin or something and Abel raised his hand to the party functionary who was doing the teaching and he said, “I don’t know why I have to read all this stuff. It’s as if a DSA member on Twitter were writing left-wing fan fiction. But the Meeropols won the legal battle and we were reunited with them in the fall of 1954. I had to be initiated and committed to the movement in order to hear these stories. Directed by Joel Katz. Abel had a spare, imagistic style and could use simple language to devastating emotional effect. I was new to the left, having joined DSA after volunteering for Bernie Sanders in 2016. It was in this era that an up-and-coming jazz singer named Billie Holiday was introduced to Abel Meeropol at Café Society, the first integrated nightclub in New York City. [9] During the musical introduction to the song, Holiday stood with her eyes closed, as if she were evoking a prayer. He wrote "Strange Fruit" (1937), which was recorded by Billie Holiday. The Party at the time was a hotbed of creative activity. It is this part of the story, the part about the left showing deep care for their own, that I might seize on for my imaginary prestige TV show. They were the famous sons of communist spies. As a result, Meeropol and Holiday both faced intense scrutiny from authorities. The house belongs to Black socialist and civil rights activist W.E.B. It needs to be able to frame those stories for widespread consumption. Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 – October 29, 1986) was an American songwriter and poet whose works were published under his pseudonym, Lewis Allan. "Strange Fruit," written by Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol in 1937, takes a harrowing and unflinching look at American racism. Perhaps you already know what the Du Bois’, the Meeropols, and the Rosenbergs all had in common. They remained friendly with Party members throughout his childhood. It was through the union that they came to know teacher and Party member, Alice Citron. His type of artistry was ideal for writing politically powerful songs. It is vital that the left continue to punch back at these rewritings of radical history. Abel Meeropol wrote Strange Fruit after seeing a photograph of a lynching. “We were told that we were going to go live with them,” Robert Meeropol, the youngest son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, recently told me of meeting his adoptive parents for the first time. First performed by Meeropol's wife and their friends in social contexts,[10] his protest song gained a certain success in and around New York. “There was no regular job,” Robert Meeropol recalls. They are waiting patiently for the orphaned sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to arrive. Their tale is a radical epic so poignant that one wonders where the 10-part miniseries is. It was here that a news bulletin interrupting their Yankees game informed them of the hour of their parents’ impending execution. As the tumultuous present unearths the radical past, Hollywood keeps putting out films that capitalize on public interest while propping up existing power structures. Meeropol, a member of the American Communist Party, using the pseudonym, Lewis Allan, published the poem in the New York Teacher and … When challenged, Holiday—whose autobiography had been ghostwritten by William Dufty—claimed, "I ain't never read that book."[19]. Meeropol, his wife, and black vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square Garden. 3 The photograph so haunted Meeropol that he wrote a poem about it entitled "Bitter Fruit," published in 1937 in The New York Teacher, the journal of the teachers union. Du Bois. Strange Fruit is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. In her 1956 autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday suggested that she, together with Meeropol, her accompanist Sonny White, and arranger Danny Mendelsohn, set the poem to music. We dropped from public sight and within a couple of years our names were changed to Meeropol.”. I know who the workers are, I know who the owners are, I know who our allies are, I know who our enemies are, that’s good enough for me! In an article written by BBC Meeropol is quoted saying, “I wrote Strange Fruit because I hate lynching, and I hate injustice, and I hate the people who perpetuate it.” Lynching was a practice that involved mob-style execution without trial, most often by hanging, and almost exclusively of … Abel and Anne are going to be their new parents. Its author recognized “Strange Fruit” as a necessary statement then–and it remains so now. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Abel Meeropol watches as his sons, Robert and Michael, play with a train set. Maybe you already know that these people flew in the same circles because they were at some point either members of the Communist Party or, at the very least, friendly to the socialist cause in America. Robert Meeropol is the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and the adoptive son of "Strange Fruit” composer Abel Meeropol. He also attended a socialist reading group that the Communist Party ran for Hollywood screenwriters. Eventually, it would also lead him to return to the community he’d left behind, blacklists be damned. Abel changed the title to “Strange Fruit” and set the poem to music in November of 1938. The song has been covered by numerous artists, including Nina Simone, UB40, Jeff Buckley, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Robert Wyatt, and Dee Dee Bridgewater. It’s a story so fantastical, and containing so many celebrated names, that it’s hard to believe it hasn’t stuck better into the mainstream. Billie Holiday was so well known for her rendition of "Strange Fruit" that "she crafted a relationship to the song that would make them inseparable". I think that misses the truth. Robert Meeropol believes that this is exactly how Abel intended the song to be used. [11], The lyrics are under copyright but have been republished in full in an academic journal, with permission.[12]. Subscribe to the Monthly Review e-newsletter (max of 1-3 per month). “Between Capitalism and Community” by Michael A. Lebowitz, Counterfire reviews “The Dawning of the Apocalypse” by Gerald Horne, Marx & Philosophy on Gerald Horne’s “Jazz and Justice”, Left Voice reviews Rob Wallace’s “Dead Epidemiologists” + This Is Hell interviews Rob Wallace, Time Talks–so does Gerald Horne: about “The Dawning of the Apocalypse”, Upper Ocean Temperatures Set a New High Record in 2020, Record number of billion-dollar disasters struck U.S. in 2020. 50+ videos Play all Mix - Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol YouTube The Negro Speaks of Rivers poem by Langston Hughes music by Margaret Bonds - Duration: 4:07. I think that misses the truth. It was also in this period that Abel Meeropol wrote the poem, “Beloved Comrade.” The poem, at eight lines, is even shorter and sparer than “Strange Fruit.” Addressing a dead friend (“To you, beloved comrade, we make this solemn vow / The fight will go on”), it comforts them in the knowledge that the struggle that they had fought and died for would continue until the final victory (“Sleep well, beloved comrade, our work will just begin / The fight will go on till we win”). Considering the vivid images and sustained metaphor of the song “Strange Fruit,” it shouldn’t be surprising that it began as a poem. The point of ‘Strange Fruit’ was that it was an attack song. The poem was meant to be a critique of the real-life lynching of two African-American men by a mob of white people who were never trialed or convicted for their acts as a group. Meeropol is the adopted son of a Jewish schoolteacher, Abel Meeropol, who saw one of these postcards in the 1930s and was prompted to write the song Strange Fruit - … Hardy. Du Bois. Billie Holiday Original label Abel Meeropol . Then again, a tale involving judicial executions on fake charges of espionage and the heroism of Jewish and Black radicals probably wouldn’t get the prestige TV greenlight. Like many artistic New York City lefties, the Meeropols joined the Communist Party in the 1930s. Their sons, Robert and Michael, were three and seven when their parents were arrested in 1950 after being accused of sharing nuclear secrets with the Soviets. ‘Strange Fruit’ has often been described as a dirge-like ballad. It was most famously performed by Billy Holiday, who first sang “Strange Fruit” in 1939. [17] Gabler worked out a special arrangement with Vocalion Records to record and distribute the song.[18]. Because Gabler worried the song was too short, he asked pianist Sonny White to improvise an introduction. Abel Meeropol (February 14, 1903 – October 29, 1986) was an American songwriter and poet whose works were published under his pseudonym, Lewis Allan. We can see the current left movement’s need for such works in the wildly successful career of a writer like Sorkin. It was an attack on the perpetrators of lynching.” It was also in this period that Abel Meeropol wrote the poem, “Beloved Comrade.” By 1953, photographs of Robert and Michael Rosenberg, in suits and Brooklyn Dodgers caps, had been plastered across newspapers for three years. My feeling of belonging came part and parcel with a feeling of exclusivity. During their parents’ imprisonment, the boys lived with their grandparents, spent a brief period in an orphanage, and finally were sent out of New York City to the home of family friends in Toms River, New Jersey. The left, however, is currently small (relatively speaking) and neoliberal cultural hegemony isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 - October 30, 1986) was an American writer, teacher and song-writer, best known under his … She was one of the trustees of the fund that was raised for Robert and Michael’s upbringing. Diana Ross recorded the song for her debut film, the Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and it was included on the chart topping soundtrack album. The song's best known recordings and performances were by Billie Holiday and Josh White. Probably written for Spanish Civil War soldiers from the International Brigades, it was sung by Josh White for Franklin Roosevelt and by Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti (two Italian anarchists framed for murder and executed in 1927). Germany draws another line in the sand for the U.S. Twitter’s ban on Trump will only deepen the U.S. tribal divide, Marxism and feminism – Marxism and Women’s Liberation extract, American capitalism’s endless military drive, were arrested in 1950 after being accused of sharing nuclear secrets with the Soviets, photographs of Robert and Michael Rosenberg, a real effect on liberal political discourse, International Commission of Inquiry to open hearings on racist police violence in the U.S. on MLK Day, “Your Economics Professor is almost Certainly a Charlatan”, The Continuing Korean War in the Murderous History of Bombing, Disability and Welfare under Monopoly Capitalism, Fighting the “Immigrant Threat” Narrative, New! The writers David Margolick and Hilton Als dismissed that claim in their work Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, writing that hers was "an account that may set a record for most misinformation per column inch". Meeropol was a member of the American Communist Party, but would later quit. Abel was a public school English teacher (he taught a young James Baldwin at Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in the early 1940s) who gave half his salary to the Communist Party. When put to music by composer Fred Katz, “Beloved Comrade” became an anthem sung at socialist funerals. VivreMusicale 1,277 views (1) Abel Meeropol, Strange Fruit (1939) Pollution Makes It Worse. However, before the adoption had been formalized, Bloch suffered a heart attack and died. [3], Meeropol set his lyrics to music with his wife and singer Laura Duncan and performed it as a protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden. Before Sorkin produces his take on the Rosenbergs, and we have to endure a walk and talk between Roy Cohn and Joseph McCarthy, I think it’s time to start sharing our own history. Holiday approached her recording label, Columbia, about the song, but the company feared reaction by record retailers in the South, as well as negative reaction from affiliates of its co-owned radio network, CBS. Here, Abel wrote television scripts. On the recording, Holiday starts singing after 70 seconds. It was an attack on the perpetrators of lynching.”. The new movement needs its own works of art, and the means to make those works are within reach. Robert Meeropol suspects that Abel and Anne only quit the Party in order to adopt him and his brother. Holiday's version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978. The tragic effect gets embodiment in the poem by the use of Meeropol’s bitter irony. One version of events claims that Barney Josephson, the founder of Café Society in Greenwich Village, New York's first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to Billie Holiday. For the rest of us, the saga of the songwriter and the sons of the murdered “spies” seems like a secret history, a potshard buried beneath the sand that speaks of a whole fallen civilization. [30][31], Billie Holiday's performances and recordings, Last edited on 30 December 2020, at 15:36, Review: Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights, "Strange Fruit is still a song for today", "The Strange Story of the Man Behind 'Strange Fruit, "Strange Fruit: Anniversary Of A Lynching". [14] Because of the power of the song, Josephson drew up some rules: Holiday would close with it; the waiters would stop all service in advance; the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday's face; and there would be no encore. [15] When Holiday's producer John Hammond also refused to record it, she turned to her friend Milt Gabler, owner of the Commodore label. [4] It was also included in the "Songs of the Century" list of the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. [22], Notable cover versions of this song include Nina Simone (whose version was sampled in Kanye West's "Blood on the Leaves"[23]), René Marie,[23] Jeff Buckley,[23] Siouxsie and the Banshees,[24] Dee Dee Bridgewater,[24] Josh White,[25] UB40,[24] Bettye LaVette[26] and Edward W. He wrote "Strange Fruit" (1937), which was recorded by Billie Holiday. [23] Rene Marie's rendition was coupled with Confederate anthem "Dixie", making for an "uncomfortable juxtaposition", according to Pellegrinelli. Abel and Anne Meeropol deciding to adopt the sons of the Rosenbergs, and their being in a position to actually do so, was one of those convergences so poetic it doesn’t seem real. Holiday recorded two major sessions of the song at Commodore, one in 1939 and one in 1944. [6][7][8] In the poem, Meeropol expressed his horror at lynchings, inspired by Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. In 1940 Meeropol, a socialist, was called to testify before a committee investigating communism and asked whether the US Communist Party had paid him to write Strange Fruit. It first appeared as a poem, “Bitter Fruit,” in the New York Teacher, a publication for the New York City Teachers Union. The Meeropol boys today are in their 70s. Anne Meeropol sang and played it on her nylon string guitar at Teachers’ … Over examined and lost much of its popularity! ” Josh White she did not these. 20, 1939 years he has been a progressive activist, author and speaker result, Meeropol and Holiday faced. Billy Holiday, who first sang “ Strange Fruit this magazine ) proves who around! A declaration of war '' and inspired the writing of the song was popularized by Billie Holiday in.. 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