Soul Music: Strange Fruit
It is never a bad time to explore the history of America's race relations. Current events in Ferguson, Missouri play out within living memory of public killings of black people by white mobs - the bodies hanging from the trees the 'strange fruit' of Abel Meeropol's angry song. Here Maggie Ayre uses the track, made famous by Billie Holiday, as a way in to the dark era that preceded the eruption of the civil rights movement.
'"Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root..." Billie Holiday's famous song expresses the horror and anguish of those communities subjected to a campaign of lynching in the American South. Soul Music hears the stories of people whose relatives were lynched by white racists and of the various forms of grief, anger and reconciliation that have followed. These include the cousin of teenager Emmett Till, whose killing in 1955 for whistling at a white woman, added powerful impetus to the civil rights movement.' BBC
Listen Here
It is never a bad time to explore the history of America's race relations. Current events in Ferguson, Missouri play out within living memory of public killings of black people by white mobs - the bodies hanging from the trees the 'strange fruit' of Abel Meeropol's angry song. Here Maggie Ayre uses the track, made famous by Billie Holiday, as a way in to the dark era that preceded the eruption of the civil rights movement.
'"Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root..." Billie Holiday's famous song expresses the horror and anguish of those communities subjected to a campaign of lynching in the American South. Soul Music hears the stories of people whose relatives were lynched by white racists and of the various forms of grief, anger and reconciliation that have followed. These include the cousin of teenager Emmett Till, whose killing in 1955 for whistling at a white woman, added powerful impetus to the civil rights movement.' BBC
Listen Here
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