‘STRANGE FRUIT’ BY BILLIE HOLIDAY | Legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday adapted “Strange Fruit” from a poem written by Jewish-American teacher Abel Meeropol. The song was a soulful indictment of the ...

In March 1939, a then-23-year-old Billie Holiday closed out her set at New York's Cafe Society with a song she hadn't performed before: "Strange Fruit." Written by Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol, ...

Black America has a long and winding history of using songs for defiance and consolation. Testimonies from slave ship sailors recall how kidnapped Africans during the Atlantic slave trade sang to send ...

Sixty-five years ago, on July 17, 1959, Billie Holiday died at Metropolitan Hospital in New York. The 44-year-old singer arrived after being turned away from a nearby charity hospital on evidence of ...

The great Billie Holiday recorded “Strange Fruit” on April 20, 1939. It is a song about lynchings, inspired by the 1930 murder of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, who were photographed, in the words of ...

Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit' lyrics were controversial to some and powerful to others. The song was Holiday's way of protesting the lynching of Black people during the Jim Crow era, and it angered ...

Music legend Billie Holiday is regarded as one of the most soulful American singers of the ‘50s. But her most powerful song, “Strange Fruit,” put Holiday on the federal government’s hit list, and ...

Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. It's a chilling photo that captures a specific and familiar horror Black Americans faced throughout history. And it's an ...

Billie Holiday's rendition of "Strange Fruit" remains a testament to injustice decades after the singer's death. File Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Today, Holiday is revered as one of the ...