Strange Fruit

After reading “Strange Fruit”, I was completely surprised by some of the things that I was reading. I was first very shocked that a white Jewish man named Lewis Allen originally wrote the song. I figured since the song was such a powerful and strong message about slavery that it would be written by Billy Holiday herself. I was also very moved by the description of how they tortured the black people before the lynched them. It was so sad to read what they went through just because of the color of their skin.

Singing “Strange Fruit” must have been such an important and meaningful song to Billy Holiday considering what happened to her father and how he passed. It was written that “he developed chronic lung problems, and in March of 1937, while on tour in Texas, with Don Redman’s band, he contracted a chest cold for which he received no treatment because of segregated hospitals in that state” (187). It was very upsetting to me that her father died because he could not be given treatment right away when he needed it just because he was not white. This really opened my eyes and also made me realize that Billy probably sang this song so well because of the close relation she had with the song.

I had also found it very surprising that the publishers would not even allow Billy to name her own autobiography whatever she wanted. She really had no freedom of choosing what she wanted to do when it came to music. Reading about Billy Holiday made me sympathize for what her and every other person of color when through at that time.