Billie Holiday's Song "Strange Fruit"

Pupils analyze a variety of primary source materials related to lynching (news articles, letters written to or written by prominent Americans, pamphlets, broadsides, etc.) in order to assess the effectiveness of the anti-lynching campaign spearheaded by African-Americans. This resource focuses on Billie Holiday's signature song, "Strange Fruit," a protest song Lewis Allen (Abel Meeropol) wrote in 1938 about the ongoing and intransigent problem of lynching in the American South.