An NYU project examines the history of lynching's after the Civil War, including one in New York State. Billie Holiday sang a disturbing ballad called “Strange Fruit” for the first time in 1939, referred to lynching's in the South, and also the North
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If Billie Holiday and Ethel Rosenberg were alive, they’d both celebrate their 100th birthdays this year. At first glance they may seem an unlikely couple, but a closer look reveals surprising parallels.
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Billie Holiday had been effectively murdered by a conspiracy to break her, orchestrated by the narcotics police - but what could she do? At Billie's funeral, there were swarms of police cars, because they feared their actions against her would trigger a riot. In his eulogy for her, the Reverend Eugene Callender said: 'We should not be here. This young lady was gifted by her creator with tremendous talent . . . She should have lived to be at least eighty years old.'
Although the great red scare of the 1950s almost erased the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit from the public arena, the strange fruit allusion - lynched bodies hanging from trees – was one of genius. It had gotten under our culture’s skin, and as time went on, it seeped out of its pores.
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