1. STRANGE FRUIT

3. STRANGE FRUIT
In 1937, Abe Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from New York, saw a photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith.

4. STRANGE FRUIT
He later said the picture haunted him for days and inspired the writing of the poem, Strange Fruit.

5. STRANGE FRUIT
Meeropol was a member of the American Communist Party. Using the pseudonym, Lewis Allan, he published Strange Fruit in the New York Teacher.

6. STRANGE FRUIT
What’s Communism?

7. STRANGE FRUIT
Communism is a political and economic system in which the major productive resources in a society—such as mines, factories, and farms—are owned by the public or the state, and wealth is divided among citizens equally or according to individual need.

8. STRANGE FRUIT
In theory, communism is a classless society in which all property is owned by the community as a whole and where all people enjoy equal social and economic status.

9. STRANGE FRUIT
As a political movement, communism sought to overthrow capitalism through a workers’ revolution and redistribute the wealth in the hands of the proletariat, or working class.

10. STRANGE FRUIT
After seeing Billie Holiday perform, Meeropol showed her the poem. Holiday liked it and worked with Sonny White to turn it into a song.

11. STRANGE FRUIT
The record made it to No. 16 on the charts in July 1939.

12. STRANGE FRUIT
Time Magazine, however, called the song a “musical piece of propaganda” for the NAACP.

13. Billie Holiday “Strange Fruit”
Billie Holiday
“Strange Fruit”

14. CREDITS http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USACstrangefruit.htm