Strange Fruit

After reading Strange Fruit, I was able to put a lot of her points in perspective. Billie was singing to raise awareness. Obviously we learn about racism all throughout school, but it really hit me after listening to Strange Fruit. She wasn't just singing for black women, but black people in general and the struggles they faced every day. A prime example of how they were treated was when the bar manager at the club she was singing at the time, asked he to sing Strange Fruit. "He paints her as an illiterate, ignorant, and passive women willing to sing Strange Fruit simply because he asked her to do it." "You want me to sing it. I sings it." (186) He mimicked her. Once she started singing Strange Fruit she became obsessed with it, and she really connected with it's meaning. "I worked like the devil on it she said, because I was never sure I could get it across to the nightclub audience how much it meant to me." (183) Essentially, Josephson (the nightclub owner) was wrong. It meant more to Billie than they could ever imagine.

Although Billie herself never experienced lynching, she connected it to her father's death. "Her father jazz guitarist, Clarence Holliday had inhaled poisonous gases during a battle in WW1." (187) Unfortunately, because of the color of his skin,  he didn't receive the proper treatment needed because of the segregated hospitals in the state of Texas. "According to Holiday's account, the antilynching theme of Strange Fruit resonated with her own anger about her father's death, and with the desire to protest the racism that had killed him." (187)

One part of this article that really stood out to me was, "Strange Fruit was a frontal challenge, not only to lynching and racism but to the policies of a government that implicitly condoned such activities, especially against its refusal to pass laws against lynching." (196) "The was the first significant protest in words and music, the first unmuted cry against racism." (196) Billie Holiday really started paving a way for others to express their concern about racism and the dangers it poses on society. It helped mold the lives of people today. He movement really helped to change the way we live. I give her so much credit for doing what she thinks is right, and standing up for what she believes in.