by Ron Porter
Billie Holiday, one of our country’s most renown singers, recorded the controversial song “Strange Fruit” in 1939 when she was just twenty-five years old. The haunting first two verses of the tune are:
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees
Pastoral scenes of the gallant South
The bulgin’ eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin’ flesh
As a young Black woman daring to publicize the repugnant reality of brutally blow torching, mutilating, and hanging Black men and women, Billie Holiday was savagely attacked by White supremacists. Attempts were made to forbid her from singing “Strange Fruit” in public performances. Police interrupted. FBI surveilled. Senators threatened. However, the bravery of Billie Holiday helped to communicate the commonality of death dealing mobs. It took decades, but public lynching has now morphed into mass incarceration, intentional economic exclusion, and Donald Trump.
Today, in 2022, there is abundant public evidence of murder no less evident than the lynchings of prior decades. I see it every day as I drive through African American neighborhoods. Although far less graphic than “strange fruit,” many telephone poles, vacant lots, and sidewalks are adorned with teddy bears and flowers, indicating a Black life ended violently at that spot. Most often, death is the result of Blacks killing Blacks. Sadly, children are killing children.
Flowers and teddy bears, symbols of life, youth, and joy, are now markers of tragedy. Neighborhood streets have become killing fields where bullets pound into bodies without knowing target from bystander. Like “strange fruit,” there are forces that seek to cloud our vision as flowers and teddy bears provide stark witness to the inhumane devastation of Black-on-Black murder.
There is no easy remedy to the trauma within our communities. Flowers and teddy bears are the “strange fruit” of our time. Whether the killers are White supremacists or Black kids in a drive-by, the finality of death imposes an irreversible loss on Black communities.
Billie Holiday is our example. We must loudly and publicly raise our voices and take action to erase the sordid legacy of “strange fruit” whose seeds sprout in the fertile soil of poverty and oppression. As members of the African American community, we owe it to ourselves to assure flowers and teddy bears are symbols of love, respect, and family.
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