Ann Wilcox - A historic fact learned today from a Michelle Miller story on CBS: Billie Holiday's classic song "Strange Fruit," was written in the 1930's by the Jewish Communist activist, Abel Meeropol (under a pseudonym). Meeropol taught at a high school in the Bronx, among his students was James Baldwin.
Meeropol and his wife later adopted the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, after their 1953 execution on charges of espionage. Billie Holiday was arrested (in part) for her refusal to stop performing "Strange Fruit."
More context for the writing of the song is below (from Wikipedia):
"Strange Fruit" originated as a poem written by the Jewish-American writer, teacher and songwriter Abel Meeropol, under his pseudonym Lewis Allan, as a protest against lynchings. 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.
Meeropol published the poem under the title "Bitter Fruit" in January 1937 in The New York Teacher, a union magazine of the Teachers Union. Though Meeropol had asked others (notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music, he set "Strange Fruit" to music himself. First performed by Meeropol's wife and their friends in social contexts, His protest song gained a certain success in and around New York. Meeropol, his wife, and the black vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square Garden.
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