Portside

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

Where can African Americans find this lost golden age? Do we discover it during the first centuries of the Republic when slavery was the law of the land? Do we fast forward to the Red Summer, Jim Crow laws, “strange fruit” hanging from poplar trees?

Reader Comments: Same Boat; Military Spending Still Huge Problem; History Behind "Strange Fruit"; Puerto Rican Studies; Palestinian Solidarity; Labor and the Movements for Peace and Social Justice; lots of Zoom events; more....

My father wrote 'Strange Fruit.' The Capitol rioters had a lot in common with the lynch mobs that inspired that song.

Reader Comments - Philippine Recovery and Climate Change; Human Origins; "Strange Fruit;" North Carolina; Delbert Tibbs; Adjunct Unions; Corporate Profits-great infographic; South Africa - COSATU-ANC-SACP Alliance; Education; Healthcare; ALEC; Occupy; Steve Kindred; Race and Cuba; Announcements - The Invention of the White Race; Celebrating the Life of Father Paul Mayer; Pete Seeger's new book

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.