Where strange fruit hangs...

Strange Fruit

sung by Billie Holiday*

Southern trees bear strange fruit

Blood on the leaves

Blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

for the rain to gather

for the wind to suck

for the sun to rot

for the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop

Left: Billie Holiday photo by William P Gottlieb

Right: Lynching of two black youths, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930 Indiana

*While famously performed as a ballad by black torch singer Billie Holiday, the poem which inspired the song was written by a white Jewish man named Abel Meeropol shocked at the lynching of the two young men pictured above.