Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights

This text explores the story of a song that foretold a movement, and the lady who dared to sing it. In 1939, the performance of the song's evocative lyrics portraying the lynching of a black man in the Southern US sparked controversy, and sometimes violence, wherever Billie Holiday went. It was 25 years before Dr Martin Luther King Jr, led his famous march on Washington, yet "Strange Fruit" lived on. In this text Margolick chronicles its effect on those who experienced it first-hand: musicians, artists, journalists, intellectuals, students and even the waitresses and bartenders who worked in the clubs.