Strange Fruit

This is the creepiest song I have ever heard in my freaking life.....I swear this is one of the most morbid things I have ever heard....

Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.


This song is going to be a question on our test somehow and we listened to it in english because we were reading to kill a mockingbird that deals with racism. If you can't tell this song is about lynching in the south and how horrific it is. Actually, there is more to it than just hanging the "guilty" but is a bit more.....thorough than most people think. The accused is set on fire, shot, beaten, dragged for miles behind a car, whipped, and then hanged. Such displays of brutality were actually public displays that even children came to for entertainment. Theres horrible events have decreased in frequency but have not completely disapeared. 2003 was going to be the first year since the formation of the Klan that noone was lynched but in december it happened. Our world is no where near perfect and it will never be because it takes just one person to make a diffrence, whether it be positive or negative. Not everyone in this world can be happy, its simply impossible and neither is everyone thinking the same way there for there will always be "good" and "evil".