'The United States vs. Billie Holiday': What Really Happened

Every product on this page was chosen by a Harper's BAZAAR editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.The singer endured an exhausting legal battle with the FBI over drug usage and her song"Strange Fruit."streaming now on the platform, follows the titular music legend in her later years amid her long-standing battle with the U.S. government regarding her seminal song,"Strange Fruit.

The real Holiday did record the song in 1939. However, it was originally written by poet, teacher, and activist Abel Meeropol, from New York. He was moved to write a poem, feeling appalled by racism in America and particularly disturbed by a photograph of a lynching that he said"haunted" him"for days," according to. He later set his words to music and played the song for a New York nightclub owner, who then passed it on to Holiday.

"Billie Holiday's styling fulfilled the bitterness and the shocking quality I had hoped the song would have," Meeropol said, according toHoliday would continue singing the song for the Cafe Society crowd, and they ate it up. According to Holiday biographer, the singer was itching to record the song after seeing the audience reactions. Her label, Columbia, wouldn't allow it, but let her record with the Commodore label, pairing the record with the ballad"Fine and Mellow.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Blackburn writes that lynching"was at its most virulent between 1900 and 1920." In fact, aon the Library of Congress shows that 106 Black Americans were reportedly lynched in the year 1900 alone. So as a popular protest song,"Strange Fruit" helped galvanize an anti-lynching movement across the country.

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