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David Margolick. Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights. Philadelphia: Running P, 2000. 160 pp. $18.95.
David Margolick has written a remarkable history of a unique song, its genesis, its recordings, the unusual emotions it stirred, and its legacy. The author meticulously analyzes the motivations of the singers and responses of listeners to "Strange Fruit," as well as its powerful impact upon both from the late 1930s. Of course, many myths surround the song, including Holiday's taking credit for writing it or claiming it was composed especially for her. Actually the history of the song started when a left-wing political activist, composer, and school teacher, Abel Meeropol (using the nom de plume Lewis Allan), saw a photo of a lynching, an image which "haunted him for days."
Meeropol wrote a poem, "Bitter Fruit," which first saw light in a...