what is the strange fruit in the song
Strange Fruit "Strange Fruit" is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. Written by teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem and published in 1937, it protested American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had reached a peak in the South at the turn of the century, but continued there and in other regions of the United States.[2][3] According to the Tuskegee Institute, 1,953 Americans were murdered by lynching, about three quarters of them black.[4] The lyrics are an extended metaphor linking a treeâ€™s fruit with lynching victims.[5] Meeropol set it to music and, with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden.