Independent Lens | Abel Meeropol, Billie Holiday and A Song Born in Protest
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PBS Learning Media
Independent Lens | Abel Meeropol, Billie Holiday and A Song Born in Protest
In the late 1930s, Abel Meeropol, son of Russian Jewish immigrants and a high school English teacher in the Bronx neighborhood where he was born, wrote a poem entitled Strange Fruit. This video discusses how the poem would later be performed by the legendary Billie Holiday as a song of protest, bringing national attention to the crime of lynching.