One version of events claims that Barney Josephson, the founder of Café Society in Greenwich Village, New York's first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to Billie Holiday. By 1953, photographs of Robert and Michael Rosenberg, in suits and Brooklyn Dodgers caps, had been plastered across newspapers for three years. It was also in this period that Abel Meeropol wrote the poem, “Beloved Comrade.” The poem, at eight lines, is even shorter and sparer than “Strange Fruit.” Addressing a dead friend (“To you, beloved comrade, we make this solemn vow / The fight will go on”), it comforts them in the knowledge that the struggle that they had fought and died for would continue until the final victory (“Sleep well, beloved comrade, our work will just begin / The fight will go on till we win”). He also attended a socialist reading group that the Communist Party ran for Hollywood screenwriters. [23] Rene Marie's rendition was coupled with Confederate anthem "Dixie", making for an "uncomfortable juxtaposition", according to Pellegrinelli. [3], Meeropol set his lyrics to music with his wife and singer Laura Duncan and performed it as a protest song in New York City venues in the late 1930s, including Madison Square Garden. [14] Because of the power of the song, Josephson drew up some rules: Holiday would close with it; the waiters would stop all service in advance; the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday's face; and there would be no encore. Their sons, Robert and Michael, were three and seven when their parents were arrested in 1950 after being accused of sharing nuclear secrets with the Soviets. VivreMusicale 1,277 views My story would begin with the Christmas party at the Du Bois’ and end with Robert and Michael being reunited with the Meeropols, after they had won their legal battle. "Strange Fruit: the first great protest song", Bettye LaVette Unleashes Cover of Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’, "Video: Listen To Edward W. Hardy's Haunting String Quartet Arrangement Of 'Strange Fruit'", "Strange Fruit: The most shocking song of all time", "Music Is Love! It was an attack on the perpetrators of lynching.” It was also in this period that Abel Meeropol wrote the poem, “Beloved Comrade.” Ecosystem Destruction Fueled the Pandemic. “There was this, that, and the other thing. [4] It was also included in the "Songs of the Century" list of the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. Michael and Robert Rosenberg went to live with the Meeropols in January of 1954. I felt rejuvenated and included. ... Jewish schoolteacher and union activist from New York City named Abel Meeropol, who was outraged after seeing a photograph of a horrific lynching in a civil-rights magazine. The man behind "Strange Fruit" is New York City's Abel Meeropol, and he really has two stories. Here, Abel wrote television scripts. It was in this era that an up-and-coming jazz singer named Billie Holiday was introduced to Abel Meeropol at Café Society, the first integrated nightclub in New York City. Du Bois. It’s December 1953. The point of ‘Strange Fruit’ was that it was an attack song. It protests the lynching of Black Americans, with lyrics that compare the victims to the fruit of trees. Holiday approached her recording label, Columbia, about the song, but the company feared reaction by record retailers in the South, as well as negative reaction from affiliates of its co-owned radio network, CBS. [6][7][8] 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. 3 The photograph so haunted Meeropol that he wrote a poem about it entitled "Bitter Fruit," published in 1937 in The New York Teacher, the journal of the teachers union. This material has been combed over in countless books and articles. Crowdsourcing funds for left-wing art won’t be an easy task either. It was written by Abel Meeropol (1903-1986), a teacher, poet and songwriter, who published under the name Lewis Allan. I think that misses the truth. After being blacklisted in the 1940s and fired from her teaching job, Citron went on to work as Shirley Graham Du Bois’ personal secretary. It was here that a news bulletin interrupting their Yankees game informed them of the hour of their parents’ impending execution. In 1940 Meeropol, a socialist, was called to testify before a committee investigating communism and asked whether the US Communist Party had paid him to write Strange Fruit. I actually wouldn’t approach the trial or the appeals much at all. “Strange Fruit” This anti-lynching poem was written by Abel Meeropol, a teacher, songwriter, and member of the American Communist Party. Abel Meeropol watches as his sons, Robert and Michael, play with a train set. It made me feel as if I had just brushed aside half a century’s worth of dust and discovered a part of my own past. “Strange Fruit” is a poem written by American-Jewish songwriter and poet Abel Meeropol in 1937, and was famously covered and recorded by Billie Holiday (Eleanora Fagan) in … New York NY 10001-5304 Other reports say that Robert Gordon, who was directing Billie Holiday's show at Café Society, heard the song at Madison Square Garden and introduced it to her. ‘Strange Fruit’ has often been described as a dirge-like ballad. Their tale is a radical epic so poignant that one wonders where the 10-part miniseries is. It’s as if a DSA member on Twitter were writing left-wing fan fiction. Perhaps you already know what the Du Bois’, the Meeropols, and the Rosenbergs all had in common. “We were told that we were going to go live with them,” Robert Meeropol, the youngest son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, recently told me of meeting his adoptive parents for the first time. Emanuel Hirsch Bloch, the Rosenbergs’ lawyer and a renowned left-wing defense attorney who had defended numerous people accused of communist sympathies, acted temporarily as their guardian. Holiday recorded two major sessions of the song at Commodore, one in 1939 and one in 1944. For the rest of us, the saga of the songwriter and the sons of the murdered “spies” seems like a secret history, a potshard buried beneath the sand that speaks of a whole fallen civilization. Columbia gave Holiday a one-session release from her contract so she could record it; Frankie Newton's eight-piece Café Society Band was used for the session. DSA understands that. Under constant threat of persecution, the New York City left was necessarily close knit. The point of ‘Strange Fruit’ was that it was an attack song. They were the famous sons of communist spies. In 1953, when he was six years old, the United States government executed his parents for "conspiring to steal the secret of the atomic bomb." The photograph helped inspire the poem and song "Strange Fruit" written by Abel Meeropol -- and performed around the world by Billie Holiday. ‘Strange Fruit’ has often been described as a dirge-like ballad. It encouraged cultural work and supported artists through organizations like John Reed Clubs for writers and the Pierre Degeyter Club for musicians. It’s even been fictionalized by E.L. Doctorow in The Book of Daniel (a beautiful example of navel-gazing Sorkinesque white guy writing if there ever was one). On the recording, Holiday starts singing after 70 seconds. Meeropol wrote the anti-lynching poem, "Strange Fruit", which was originally published in the Marxist publication The New Massesand was subsequently set to music. [2] The song has been called "a declaration of war" and "the beginning of the civil rights movement". Robert Meeropol believes that this is exactly how Abel intended the song to be used. [9][10] Though Meeropol had asked others (notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music, he set "Strange Fruit" to music himself. Blood on … Robert and Michael were raised in a loving, quirky, left-wing home. Bloch was informed of the Meeropols’ request to adopt the boys through Shirley Graham Du Bois, wife of W.E.B. In October 1939, Samuel Grafton of the New York Post said of "Strange Fruit", "If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise. In 1945, the Meeropols, fearful of being blacklisted like Alice Citron and so many of their fellow Teachers Union members, left their teaching jobs and took off for Los Angeles. What are its downsides?” She did not learn these things. Considering the vivid images and sustained metaphor of the song “Strange Fruit,” it shouldn’t be surprising that it began as a poem. According to Robert Meeropol, Abel had a visceral “anger over injustice and a willingness to act upon that.” Alongside these deep feelings also appears to have been a uniquely attuned moral clarity. In her 1956 autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday suggested that she, together with Meeropol, her accompanist Sonny White, and arranger Danny Mendelsohn, set the poem to music. Eventually, it would also lead him to return to the community he’d left behind, blacklists be damned. Abel and Anne are going to be their new parents. Strange Fruit If you listen carefully to the lyrics of Billy Holiday's version of the Abel Meeropol song, "Strange Fruit, " you will realise it is a protest song about the lynching of African Americans in the Southern United States.Black victims are portrayed as "strange fruit, " as their dead bodies hang from trees, rotting in the sun, swaying to and fro in the wind, and being eaten by crows. It is this part of the story, the part about the left showing deep care for their own, that I might seize on for my imaginary prestige TV show. It also made me think about how small and secretive the left was for so many decades, and in some ways continues to be. Abel Meeropol's biography and life story. The symbolic tree has blood on the leaves and in its root. Recently, Sing in Solidarity, a choir composed of members of Democratic Socialists of America (of which I am a member), sang it for the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 - October 30, 1986) was an American writer, teacher and song-writer, best known under his … Robert Meeropol is the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and the adoptive son of "Strange Fruit” composer Abel Meeropol. The only way the Meeropols’ story would get approved by network executives is if it were pitched by someone like Aaron Sorkin—who would no doubt fill his script with speechifying neoliberals. We dropped from public sight and within a couple of years our names were changed to Meeropol.”. Billie Holiday was so well known for her rendition of "Strange Fruit" that "she crafted a relationship to the song that would make them inseparable". Anne Meeropol sang and played it on her nylon string guitar at Teachers’ … It was most famously performed by Billy Holiday, who first sang “Strange Fruit” in 1939. 1) ‘Strange Fruit’ was inspired by lynchings that took place in 20th-century America The song was first written as a poem and published under Abel Meeropol’s pseudonym, Lewis Allan, in 1937. Its author recognized “Strange Fruit” as a necessary statement then–and it remains so now. I think that misses the truth. Many people know that the man who wrote the song was inspired by a photograph of a lynching. As lefty public school teachers, the Meeropols were both heavily involved in the New York City Teachers Union. Abel was a public school English teacher (he taught a young James Baldwin at Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in the early 1940s) who gave half his salary to the Communist Party. [16] Holiday sang "Strange Fruit" for him a cappella, and moved him to tears. It is vital that the left continue to punch back at these rewritings of radical history. [27] Nina Simone recorded the song in 1965,[28] a recording described by journalist David Margolick in the New York Times as featuring a "plain and unsentimental voice". However, its delusionally “pragmatic” messaging had a real effect on liberal political discourse and practice. [30][31], Billie Holiday's performances and recordings, Last edited on 30 December 2020, at 15:36, Review: Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights, "Strange Fruit is still a song for today", "The Strange Story of the Man Behind 'Strange Fruit, "Strange Fruit: Anniversary Of A Lynching". This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. The song has been covered by numerous artists, including Nina Simone, UB40, Jeff Buckley, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Robert Wyatt, and Dee Dee Bridgewater. Like many artistic New York City lefties, the Meeropols joined the Communist Party in the 1930s. [17] Gabler worked out a special arrangement with Vocalion Records to record and distribute the song.[18]. (1) Abel Meeropol, Strange Fruit (1939) However, before the adoption had been formalized, Bloch suffered a heart attack and died. Later, his song was popularized by Billie Holiday and became well-known for confronting racism in America head-on. The sons of accused spies, taken under the wings of famous civil rights icons, wind up in the care of radical artists and activists. I would sidestep David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg’s brother who implicated her and Julius in the spy ring, and on whose testimony much of the evidence in the case relied. When challenged, Holiday—whose autobiography had been ghostwritten by William Dufty—claimed, "I ain't never read that book."[19]. If you didn’t know their back story, they would appear much like the other “red diaper babies” of their generation—that coterie of diehards who protested Vietnam, kept the faith through the dire neoliberal period, and even sent their kids to socialist summer camp. I would instead focus my story on the left-wing community in New York City who rallied around the Rosenberg family. His type of artistry was ideal for writing politically powerful songs. Robert Meeropol suspects that Abel and Anne only quit the Party in order to adopt him and his brother. To acknowledge this fact is to acknowledge the need for ambitious left-wing storytelling that can act as a counternarrative. [7], Meeropol published the poem under the title "Bitter Fruit" in January 1937 in The New York Teacher, a union magazine of the Teachers Union. Hardy. It was a little reward for having the faith in humanity that had brought me to the left in the first place. [11], The lyrics are under copyright but have been republished in full in an academic journal, with permission.[12]. "[21] In an attempt to have a two-thirds majority in the Senate that would break the filibusters by the southern senators, anti-racism activists were encouraged to mail copies of "Strange Fruit" to their senators. Meeropol was a member of the American Communist Party, but would later quit. It’s a story so fantastical, and containing so many celebrated names, that it’s hard to believe it hasn’t stuck better into the mainstream. I would zero in on the interconnected network of unions, socialist organizations, and civil rights groups that events like the execution of the Rosenbergs left in tatters. The new movement needs its own works of art, and the means to make those works are within reach. My story would focus not on the government’s case against the Rosenbergs, nor Bloch’s defense. The Meeropol boys today are in their 70s. He wrote songs for left-wing reviews that were supported by or in the orbit of the Party. In 1937, after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of a black man in the south, Bronx-born high school teacher Abel Meeropol wrote a poem entitled "Strange Fruit" that begins with the words: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root." Du Bois. Films like Lincoln (2012), On The Basis of Sex (2018), and, most recently, Sorkin’s 2020 drama The Trial of the Chicago 7 lean into top-down proceduralism and emphasize the enduring, unshakeable nature of American institutions. They remained friendly with Party members throughout his childhood. The point of ‘Strange Fruit’ was that it was an attack song. I first learned the Meeropols’ story in 2018 when, as a member of Sing in Solidarity, I was taught to sing “Beloved Comrade” for a memorial to Heather Heyer—the young woman murdered in the Charlottesville terror attack in 2017. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Perhaps you’ve already guessed the secret behind this odd convergence of people. He wrote "Strange Fruit" (1937), which was recorded by Billie Holiday. Because Gabler worried the song was too short, he asked pianist Sonny White to improvise an introduction. At the party, perhaps standing off to the side of the partygoers, is the poet-songwriter Abel Meeropol (also known by his pen name, Lewis Allan), the author of famous anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit.” He stands beside his wife, Anne Meeropol, a public school teacher and union organizer. Composed in 1937 by left-wing New York City school teacher, poet and songwriter Meeropol, it was a visceral call to action in a time when people of conscience fought for anti-lynching legislation. Meeropol, a member of the American Communist Party, using the pseudonym, Lewis Allan, published the poem in the New York Teacher and … “Between Capitalism and Community” by Michael A. Lebowitz, Counterfire reviews “The Dawning of the Apocalypse” by Gerald Horne, Marx & Philosophy on Gerald Horne’s “Jazz and Justice”, Left Voice reviews Rob Wallace’s “Dead Epidemiologists” + This Is Hell interviews Rob Wallace, Time Talks–so does Gerald Horne: about “The Dawning of the Apocalypse”, Upper Ocean Temperatures Set a New High Record in 2020, Record number of billion-dollar disasters struck U.S. in 2020. As the tumultuous present unearths the radical past, Hollywood keeps putting out films that capitalize on public interest while propping up existing power structures. They are waiting patiently for the orphaned sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to arrive. In our current moment of widespread helplessness, when narrativizing our past would be a therapeutic and politically expedient practice, left-wing history is instead being rewritten by liberals like Aaron Sorkin. [23] LA Times noted that Siouxsie and the Banshees's version contained "a solemn string section behind the vocals" and "a bridge of New Orleans funeral-march jazz" which enhanced the singer's "evocative interpretation". I’d stroll around that material, which I believe has been over examined and lost much of its humanity. People who grew up on the American left, and especially the Jewish American left, might feel a flicker of recognition at the mention of their birth names. Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Then again, a tale involving judicial executions on fake charges of espionage and the heroism of Jewish and Black radicals probably wouldn’t get the prestige TV greenlight. Abel and Anne Meeropol deciding to adopt the sons of the Rosenbergs, and their being in a position to actually do so, was one of those convergences so poetic it doesn’t seem real. Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday song meaning, lyric interpretation, video and chart position. First performed by Meeropol's wife and their friends in social contexts,[10] his protest song gained a certain success in and around New York. When put to music by composer Fred Katz, “Beloved Comrade” became an anthem sung at socialist funerals. Thankfully though Abel Meeropol, a American songwriter, took the poem and turned it into something very distinguished. The Bernie Sanders campaigns understood that. There she first sang his song “Strange Fruit” to hushed and astonished audiences. My feeling of belonging came part and parcel with a feeling of exclusivity. It is long past time that we claimed our past, and publicly narrated our stories—stories like Abel and Anne Meeropol’s—and won back the (currently Sorkinized) political ground in the popular imagination. The song's best known recordings and performances were by Billie Holiday and Josh White. Courtesy of Robert and Michael Meeropol One of Billie Holiday's most iconic songs is "Strange Fruit," a haunting protest against the inhumanity of racism. The house belongs to Black socialist and civil rights activist W.E.B. The writers David Margolick and Hilton Als dismissed that claim in their work Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, writing that hers was "an account that may set a record for most misinformation per column inch". Meeropol, his wife, and black vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square Garden. Robert Meeropol remembers Malvina Reynolds singing “Little Boxes” on their living room sofa. Transcript: James Baldwin’s ‘Little Houses’ and Abel Meeropol’s ‘Strange Fruit’ Paul Gilroy: My name is Paul Gilroy, I'm the Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the study of Racism and Racialisation at University College London. It is also not an impossible one, as the existence of independent left media (like this magazine) proves. In 1936, Abel Meeropol, a Jewish American public high school teacher in the Bronx, NY, saw a photograph of the lynching of two African American teenagers, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. She said that singing it made her fearful of retaliation but, because its imagery reminded her of her father, she continued to sing the piece, making it a regular part of her live performances. Monthly Review Foundation While Abel Meeropol was a communist, “Beloved Comrade” belongs to no faction and has been sung in solidarity by many left-wing movements. It needs to be able to frame those stories for widespread consumption. This piece’s history is compelling. While Hollywood isn’t going to tell the real story of the Meeropols anytime soon, if I were to make that TV series, I would open it on a party scene in the front parlor of a Brooklyn brownstone. He published it in a union publication in 1937 and then set it to music. The left would go crazy over Jewish American dissidents Abel and Anne Meeropol if they were alive today. With Dorothy Thigpen, Milton Gabler, Farah Jasmine Griffin, C.T. Meeropol is the adopted son of a Jewish schoolteacher, Abel Meeropol, who saw one of these postcards in the 1930s and was prompted to write the song Strange Fruit - … Strange Fruit: The most shocking song of all time? The room is decorated for Christmas. But the Meeropols won the legal battle and we were reunited with them in the fall of 1954. Diana Ross recorded the song for her debut film, the Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and it was included on the chart topping soundtrack album. But we also need to do our own storytelling, to make creative narrative works that mythologize our own past. Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” (1939) “Strange Fruit” was written by Abel Meeropol, a white English teacher from New York City, as a protest against the horrors of lynching. I had to be initiated and committed to the movement in order to hear these stories. Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 – October 29, 1986) was an American songwriter and poet whose works were published under his pseudonym, Lewis Allan. The tragic effect gets embodiment in the poem by the use of Meeropol’s bitter irony. The Rosenbergs were executed June 19, 1953. Lynching was a practice that involved mob-style execution without trial, most often by hanging, and almost exclusively of … I guess it was a pretty exciting and rich environment for a young kid growing up.” His parents were forever running off to rehearsals and performances of left-wing concerts. As a result, Meeropol and Holiday both faced intense scrutiny from authorities. "Strange Fruit" originated as a poem written by Jewish-American writer, teacher and songwriter Abel Meeropol, under his pseudonym Lewis Allan, as a protest against lynchings. Maybe you already know that these people flew in the same circles because they were at some point either members of the Communist Party or, at the very least, friendly to the socialist cause in America. In 1937 Abe Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from New York, saw a photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. [15] When Holiday's producer John Hammond also refused to record it, she turned to her friend Milt Gabler, owner of the Commodore label. In the 1930s, the Communist Party USA swelled to about 80,000 members at the height of its popularity. Hearing this story made me feel bound to my new community, and made me think how powerful a collective memory like this can be. The Meeropols were living back in New York City in 1954 when they adopted the Rosenberg boys. “At that point, right-wing groups tried to have us taken from Abel and Anne, and a court custody battle developed,” Robert Meeropol told me. We can see the current left movement’s need for such works in the wildly successful career of a writer like Sorkin. Abel Meeropol writing rhythm and rhyme Injustice inflicted on fellow men Jewish poet formed by events of his time Razor-sharp lines flowing out of his pen His thoughts wandering to the news of the south Whites lynching blacks on barren southern trees Strange fruit harvest as related mouth to mouth Democracy swings on a killing breeze [22], Notable cover versions of this song include Nina Simone (whose version was sampled in Kanye West's "Blood on the Leaves"[23]), René Marie,[23] Jeff Buckley,[23] Siouxsie and the Banshees,[24] Dee Dee Bridgewater,[24] Josh White,[25] UB40,[24] Bettye LaVette[26] and Edward W. ‘Strange Fruit’ has often been described as a dirge-like ballad. Tel: 212-691-2555. ‘Strange Fruit’ by Abel Meeropol is a poem on the genocide of black people in America. At that point we had been shuttled around so much… we said OK. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were the first U.S. civilians to be executed for espionage during peacetime. 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