Entry · catalog no. 8412
strange fruit
/ /streɪndʒ fruːt/ /STRAYNJ FROOT
noun · New York City (Café Society); the Jim Crow South · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
A metaphor for the bodies of Black people lynched and hung from trees in the Jim Crow South.
“The song called the lynched bodies strange fruit, and nobody in the room could look away.”
2.
The song Strange Fruit, recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939.
“She closed every set with Strange Fruit.”
Origin & Attribution
The words were written as a poem by Abel Meeropol, a white Jewish teacher in the Bronx who published as Lewis Allan; it appeared in 1937 in the New York Teacher, and he set it to music. Billie Holiday began performing it at Café Society in Greenwich Village in 1939 and recorded it for Commodore Records on April 20, 1939. The phrase's life as a name for lynching comes largely through Holiday's performance. The entry credits Meeropol with the words and Holiday with carrying the phrase into Black and national memory.
1937
Abel Meeropol's poem published in the New York Teacher
1939
Billie Holiday records the song for Commodore Records
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
New York City (Café Society); the Jim Crow South · 1930s
Spoken by
Black performers and audiences, then writers and historians
$STRANGThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady89 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
65/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1937
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
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Citations & Sources
■
Strange Fruit, Wikipedia
article
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Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit: The World's First Protest Song, History Hit
article
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+ Cite a sourceThe Haunting Story Behind Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit, American Songwriter
article
See also