American idol
In 1939, jazz singer Billie Holiday was handed a song that would change her life. Strange Fruit had been written two years earlier by Jewish poet Abel Meeropol and when Billie sang it to close her shows, the haunting lynching story of “black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze” shot her to fame – and put her firmly in the crosshairs of the FBI.
This is the story told in new film
The United States Vs. Billie Holiday, which is due to hit cinemas on April 22.
According to civil rights activist the Reverend Al Sharpton, while it was drug possession that would see Billie (played in the film by Oscar-nominated actress Andra Day) jailed in 1947, it was fear of the effect of Strange Fruit that made the crime agency target the singer.
“The route they chose with Billie and others [in the civil rights movement],” said Sharpton, “was to discredit the voices, rather than deal with what the voices were saying. The sad and sick part is the FBI should have been going after lynching rather than Billie, who was singing about lynching. It shows the perversion of law enforcement.”