Kara Beechler - Hist. 137 Song Paper Song Paper Classified as one of the “earliest explicitly black protest songs” (Smith, 1), “Strange Fruit” was recorded in 1939 by artist Billie Holiday. It was originally a poem that was published in a magazine in the year 1937 by Abel Meeropol under the name “Bitter Fruit” under his pseudonym Lewis Allen. He was inspired by a photograph of a double-lynching he had seen. (Carvalho, 111) When Billie Holiday set out to record this song she was criticized by her label for the song’s lyrics. They stated that it was “too political” to release (Smith, 1), which is why she then had to get permission from her record label to record it under another record label called Commodore, which finally released it as a single. …show more content…
To further understand the depths of what occurred during this timeframe and how the song had mostly negative reactions, we need to take a look back at the why. One example is from an article written by William F. Pinar where he notes the following information: “Between 1882 to 1927, it is estimated that nearly 4,900 persons were lynched in the United States”. (Pinar, 50) Although we do not know how many black people were lynched exactly, not all lynchings were documented. For one example, it was common in the South for inequality to be present during the Jim Crowe era. “Between 1884-1900, nearly 1,700 blacks were lynched in the South.” (Hewitt and Lawson, 547) One must also take note of the efforts by multiple people to speak out against lynching, notably throughout the anti-lynching movement years. For example, Ida B. Wells was a former slave and activist for the anti-lynching movement and she estimated “over 10,000 black lives were lost”. Pinar, 51, continued to advocate for those being harmed in many ways. For example, she wrote “scathing articles and pamphlets that condemned lynching.” (Hewitt and Lawson, …show more content…
“Strange Fruit” Single, Commodore, 1939. Hewitt, Nancy A., and Steven F. Lawson. Exploring American Histories: Thinking through Sources. Bedford/St. Martin’s, in the future, 2019. Smith, Robert. The. “"Strange Fruit"” Encyclopedia of African-American Politics, Third Edition, Facts On File, 2021. American History, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=102073&itemid=WE52&articleId=159902. Pinar, William F. “STRANGE FRUIT.” Counterpoints, vol. 78, no. 1, pp. 163, 2001, pp. 113-114. 47–115. The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Se JSTOR,
C. Vann Woodward, who died in 1999 at the age of 91, was America's most Southern historian and the winner of a Pulitzer Prize, for Mary Chestnut's Civil War. He’s also a Bancroft Prize for The Origins of the New South. In honor of his long and adventurous career, Oxford is pleased to publish this special commemorative edition of Woodward's most influential work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. The book actually helped shape that historical curve of black liberation; it’s not slowed movement; it’s more like a rollercoaster.
...also used a summary by Philip D. Morgan in Winthrop D. Jordan’s book, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812. Vaughn like the previous three authors also used a History of Virginia and a History of Barbados for his research.
Gilmore argues that African American male political participation between 1890 and 1898 represented a movement toward greater inclusion. She claims that African American males in politics strove for the balance of power between political parties in North Carolina, and that the Populist-Republican victory in 1896 kept African American votes in contention and maintained some African American men in political office for a short period of time. There was an agreement between African Americans and whites that the “Best Men,” middle class African Americans, were to be the only African Americans to hold office. This was because by being dubbed the “Best Men,” they had met certain standards and were suitable for office according to the white politicians. The “Best Men” clashed with the South’s “New White Man,” who sought to re-monopolize voting rights and political power, as well as to completely dominate African Americans. Gilmore attributes the “New White Man’s” goals to these men’s bitterness towards their fathers who were blamed for the defeat in the Civil War, southern underdevelopment, and black progress. Nonetheless, African American men rapidly increased power in politics when many positions became publicly elected.
Writing around the same time period as Phillips, though from the obverse vantage, was Richard Wright. Wright’s essay, “The Inheritors of Slavery,” was not presented at the American Historical Society’s annual meeting. His piece is not festooned with foot-notes or carefully sourced. It was written only about a decade after Phillips’s, and meant to be published as a complement to a series of Farm Credit Administration photographs of black Americans. Wright was not an academic writing for an audience of his peers; he was a novelist acceding to a request from a publisher. His essay is naturally of a more literary bent than Phillips’s, and, because he was a black man writing ...
Walker addresses biases established by Jefferson decades before his time that still significantly shape the way many think about blacks. In doing so, Walker is able to draw attention the problematic logic behind said arguments. Ultimately, in his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, David Walker addresses the arguments, presented in Thomas Jefferson’ Notes on the State of Virginia, of race superiority, slavery, citizenship, and Jefferson’s own default validation by means of his authority, to further and strengthen his own abolitionist
...howing the true race relations throughout the south during that period. Jim Crow laws might not have been in effect and might have been though unnecessary by a portion of southerners, but it would be interesting to find out how many African Americans were lynched during the period before Jim Crow laws became prominent for ‘offenses’ which would later be illegal under Jim Crow. Just as Woodward quoted President Eisenhower as saying “you cannot change people’s hearts merely by law”(163), so the lack of Jim Crow legislation does not necessarily mean that some southerners wanted it and lived as though it existed.
Although an effort is made in connecting with the blacks, the idea behind it is not in understanding the blacks and their culture but rather is an exploitative one. It had an adverse impact on the black community by degrading their esteem and status in the community. For many years, the political process also had been influenced by the same ideas and had ignored the black population in the political process (Belk, 1990). America loves appropriating black culture — even when black people themselves, at times, don’t receive much love from America.
Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
“Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday conveys the inhumane, gory lynchings of African-Americans in the American South, and how this highly unnatural act had entrenched itself into the society and culture of the South, almost as if it were an agricultural crop. Although the song did not originate from Holiday, her first performance of it in 1939 in New York City and successive recording of the song became highly popular for their emotional power (“Strange fruit,” 2017). The lyrics in the song highlight the contrast between the natural beauty and apparent sophistication of the agricultural South with the brutal violence of lynchings. Holiday communicates these rather disturbing lyrics through a peculiarly serene vocal delivery, accompanied by a hymn-like
The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.
Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va., by University of North Carolina Press, 1961.
Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the American Revolution. The University of North Carolina Press; November 25, 1996
"The Debate over Slavery in the United States. " The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003.
Schoettler, Carl. "Tinged with Sorrow but Sung with Love; Blues: `Strange Fruit,' the Mournful Dirge about Lynching, is Forever Linked with Billie Holiday. A New Book about the Singer from Baltimore Recalls the Moment She Introduced it." The Baltimore Sun Jun 13 2000: 1.F. ProQuest Central. 16 Nov. 2011