good morning, everyone.

good morning and. wanted i'm harold holzer and i have the privilege of serving as director roosevelt house and speaking for anne kershner, the president of hunter college. i want to welcome all of you to this historic place for this amazing convening that we're having. greetings also to the audience, which will also be privileged to see the event. we have to bring you this morning. and it's a truly. one, not only a chance to black history month, not only an opportunity to honor the unsung billie holiday, but to do so in the long time home of her

favorite america and president franklin d roosevelt. and we have evidence of that, which you may hear along the way today. i haven't seen paul's book, but i will find validation, his brand new book. and by the way the brand new book by our convener host paul alexander is really what brings us together today. so i am going to hold up better crop his extraordinary new account of billie holiday's fine final year doesn't that look like an album cover when were all younger it's brilliant concept. i love it. welcome also to michael meeropol margo jefferson and my friend david margolick. it's so great to have you all here as well. so as of last night have more than 1200 people registered in person or online for this event. we've never had a response quite

like this paul. i have a feeling it's mostly billie but all tribute to you as well. i know some of you are many of you are on zoom. many of you are on zoom. some of you may be overflow rooms during day and evening, but please be patient. stay where you are. stay tuned because the conversation and the commentary and the performances are going to be truly amazing. again billie really liked fdr and maybe because fdr was the first president to actually contemporary music. oh yes. his favorite singer may have been kate smith. at least that's what he told kate smith, the king of england, during a visit to hyde park. but maybe he had kind of cooler tastes when. he was staying here in town because was and he ran his

presidential campaign from here. fdr was the first presidential candidate to choose his official song from a modern source happy are here again was actually from a 1930 musical called rainbows. i looked in vain for the ultimate connection that the composer and lyricist might have produced a song that billie holiday sang. i didn't succeed there, but i did try. and it's also notable that during the new deal, which was planned upstairs, fdr, his library during the presidential transition, 1930 233, this small house, in fact, one small room served as the entire transition headquarters for that momentous four month period inaugurate sessions were in march. during that time, the administer nation that was incoming conceived the idea of a relief program that not constructed

buildings like one of hunter college's buildings not only put farm factory workers back the job, but also for the first time provided federal support to writers artists and yes, musicians. so those the connections and of writers i do want, again acknowledge paul alexander, a treasured teacher at hunter and has this his second produced simple for roosevelt house last year he presented a symposium sylvia plath which also mously well-received. if anyone is curious about those sessions, they are available perpetually on the on the roosevelt house website. so be assured will be able to pick up a copy better crop upstairs during the breaks and also books by our special guests

to this morning. so paul thank you for everything you did to bring us here and i you to please take it away ladies and gentlemen let's welcome and thank alexander. welcome to the billie holiday symposium at hunter. as i said, i'm the author of this new book and. to follow first of all, the picture up here is from billie when she was recording strange the recording session where she recorded strange fruit. so she may have been singing it at that point. and as harold said, she was fdr was her favorite. eleanor was also friends, billie, as were the children who often went to see or at cafes on saturday when she was playing downtown between 39 and 41. so it's a very strong connection

with the roosevelts, which makes a lot of sense since we're having this symposium for her here. i'm in terms better crop. my book is different from. a lot of what has been said and written, billie, in the past, because that portrays her as a victim or as a failure. and i see her quite differently and depict her quite differently in my book. i see her for what she was. she was powerful woman who overcame the hardships of her life to create a body of work that made her a preeminent jazz singer and ultimately an american icon. so that's my take on billie holiday and the other depictions of her that was seen through the years of our you know, they're valid, i suppose, from that point of view. but i have quite different point of view of her and that's

what'll be reflected in my book, reflected in the symposium today. obviously strange fruit is probably her most famous song she recorded in 1939. and i wanted to talk a little bit about that beginning about sort of an overview, the song and how it came about. and then by doing that, i also get to talk about an oddity of, billie, and that was her. unique ability to embroider well, fabricate sessions and periods from, her life, episodes from her life, or at least enhance. and so she did that with strange fruit and her autobiography, lady sings the blues, which came out in 1956 and is still available today. so better crop. this is how describe that i wrote the following and her autobiography billie how the

song strange fruit came about and this is her from her book the germ of the tone was a poem written by louis allen. i first met him and when he showed me the poem, i got right off allen's, suggested that sonny white, who had been my accompanist and turn it into music. so the three of us got together and did the job in about three weeks. i also got a wonderful assist from danny mendelson, writer who had done a for me. he helped me with arranging the song and rehearsing it patiently as end of her quote. and then i write passages may have been provided may have provided yet another scintillating tell for her audience to relish. but none of the facts were true. none of them the creator of the song, as michael wells knows, is abel meeropol, who was born in

1903 and raised in a russian jewish family in manhattan. he a bachelor's degree from city college. the college year declared, him a gifted poet, and the genius and a master's in arts from the and english literature from harvard. an english teacher at dewitt clinton high school in the meeropol was an aspiring writer and member of the communist party, having joined around 1932, he contributed the young communist league, the theater arts committee, and the lincoln brigade, which was why he chose to publish under the pseudonym lewis allen, an homage to his stillborn son, who would have been given that name. and he did not wish his leftist politics to interfere. his ability to earn a living. still, he was sympathizer to the party's advocacy for racial

equality, particularly in supporting its federal anti lynching legislation throughout the jim crow lynching posed a to blacks, especially in the south in the 1930s, there was a concerted to pass legislation in the us congress to outlaw the practice. meeropol was saw this as an opportunity to contribute to the political debate when he ran across a picture his in a civil rights magazine. and this is a quote from meeropol way back in the early thirties. he i saw a photograph of a lynching published in a magazine devoted to the exposure and eliminate section of racial injustice. it was a shocking photograph and haunted me for days and quite the picture of two black teenagers, thomas shipp and abrams, lynched and buried in indiana in 1930, was taken by lawrence bowdler.

that's the end of my from the book and let me point out that the federal anti-lynching legislation would not be passed for almost one full century until it finally signed into law by president joe biden and now. recorded in 1939 by milt cabler's commodore records here, the original version of strange fruit.

so not trees very strange fruit, blood on the knee. and blood at the root. black bodies swing in in sun, no

breeze, strange fruit from, the popular tree. has seen, no gallop, so. no gold eyes and the twisted mouth. scent of may nor young sweet and gray in the sense no burning flame is here is a fruit for crows to look for the rain

together for the sun for the sun to write for the trees to drown. up here is a straight an nba to. cross. and now to introduce the guest for the morning panel. i'd like to introduce the chairman of the student committee who helps run this symposium. julie rosenberg.

good morning everyone. michael meeropol is an economist, educator and for many years he was a professor of economics and department chair at western england university. after retirement there, he taught for four years at john jay college of criminal justice of the city, university of new. among his books is surrender how the clinton administration completed the revolution. meeropol is the biological son of julius and rosenberg after the death of his parents, he and his brother robert were adopted by abel meeropol, who wrote strange over the years. meeropol has written about his biological parents. he edited the rosenberg letters and, his parents prison correspondence with his brother authored we are your sons. in addition, meeropol has written and lectured extensively about the importance of strange fruit as an anthem for social reform, appearing for example, in strange fruit story of protest song, a documentary film

by katz to speak about abel and the enduring power of strange trees. welcome michael meeropol michael meeropol. first of all, i want to thank harold paul for including me on this fabulous, distinguished panel. it is wonderful to be sitting next to david and it is an absolute honor to share the stage with professor jefferson, i met my father when i was ten years old christmas eve, 1953. my brother and i began living with dad and mom. soon. and during the next seven years before i went away to college, i had the good to live. an extraordinary and yes, privileged life. robbie and i won the lottery with our adoptive parents and their extended family. and during those years and subsequent years as an adult. from time to time, i would learn things about dad's life that me

to the inescapable conclusion that he was a most extraordinary human being. intel, a funny, kind, loving, talented, a true mensch. since he died in 1986, i have learned, even more about him from the work of musicologist nancy baker. david's book, filmmaker katz, who was in the audience, and my father's biographer, david newstead, about him later and before i get to the meat of my present, then i am going to try to keep to a time limit. i want to acknowledge the works of all four folks. nancy baker published an article entitled abel meeropol, a.k.a. lewis allen, political commentator, social conscience, in the journal american music back in 2000, two. i am not sure it's behind a paywall or not online, but you can find this in some libraries anyway. david's work will be front and center after i finished and

joel's film is entitled strange fruit well worth, watching it is available on streaming services. kanopy and vimeo on demand and can't speak enough of it. even though i was it, i can't speak enough. and finally there is an exhaustively researched, full length biography of, my father, by a man named david newstead been working on it for eight years. he has agent. he is searching for a publisher. he's on twitter and instagram and can't make this stuff up. writes a blog called the philosophy of shaving. it's true. have never read the blog. i've read the book and. it's pretty -- good. i will try to distill what i have learned from these four important points of information, as well as my memories of dad to talk about the man as he grew to be the person who wrote strange fruit set it to music, and then played it for billie holiday.

five things one you've already heard he was the son of immigrant -- from russia to he saw the connection between the oppression of -- throughout history and the second class citizenship of black americans. three he was a communist having based on what he saw around him as a child of class immigrants in the first two decades of the last century that the system he lived under was for he was very creative with a keen sense of humor and a feel music. although he never had any formal music training, took piano lessons when was young and when he was at harvard, he had a job at a gig in, a band, and he told me all he did was play chords. there was they never let him play a solo five. very important. he was angry his sense of injustice didn't just make him sad it made mad. okay. dad's mother was pregnant him while she and her husband the two older children made the from

odessa on the black sea, new york city. my grandfather jeff meeropol anglicized to leo dad's father had experienced at least one pogrom in kiev, the ukrainian province of the russian empire, before moving to odessa. the mirror pulse were atheists. socialists spoke russian at home, not yiddish. very important for those of you know about the the yiddish waves jewish immigrants after 1880 most of them were yiddish speakers including my other sets of grandparents to. the connection between anti-semite racism and black second class citizenship as. i said, yes, mr. polski survived, a pogrom in kiev where he was from, his wife, sophie. we called her. you grew up odessa and was probably class because her family owned pharmacy. i was all set to say it in

russian because that's how she talked about it. she on the second floor there and she russian, she was literate. she actually had taken some university classes. she had undoubtedly survived at least one pogrom in odessa. well, dad have been aware of anti-semitism. once told me a story that when he was at harvard and he was with a bunch of fellow jewish, he turns around and there's a couple obviously anti-semites going for those of you who don't know what that means, this is making fun of -- because we talk with our hands. and my father, it made enough of an impression on him because remember, he was born in new york, grew up in new york. you have not experienced that kind personal triggering anti semitism before being in cambridge when he went there for harvard. and that was the first time i realized that this was a anti-semitic trope that people would do with --. it certainly a hell of a lot better than yelling -- -- or beating them up, but it's with him long enough to mention it to

me. the poem that he wrote five lines very short makes that connection. it's in both nancy baker's article and david newsted's book, i am a --. how do i know the --? lynched? reminds me. well, i am a --. early in our lives together, mom and dad told and me the story about how dad confronted a cop who seemed totally uninterested in getting medical for a black man who'd been injured dad raised such a stink he was arrested and spent a night in jail. mom told me this, was raphael a jewish fashion cop? and i, the anger in her voice was clear. how dare a -- be a racist? well, we know, unfortunately, there's no there's no perfect ness anywhere. luckily, dad didn't get into a fight with.

a cop. he spent one night in jail, and the thing was dismissed. three. he became a communist he was a high school student during war. one, his father and had to register for the draft. he didn't obviously he was too young. thus he knew the russian revolution, the russian war with the white armies massacre. and he knew about the fact that the new soviet union had given --, the soviet union, full citizenship. he also knew because was 19, 19, 19, 19, he was already 16 years old, a very obviously well read high student about the race riots that led to black veterans in uniform being lynched, among other because his parents were atheists and he had no formal religious training. he did not have to throw off the religious objections to godless communism that kept many americans from embracing left as a child of atheists the way he was relatively rare for first generation american --, as paul

mentioned, he probably joined the communist party around 32, although there's no record of when he joined the party. we know he joined the party because he talked at with robby and me about some of his activities in the party. he always told another story, he filled out an application for a ph.d. program in english literature at columbia university, went up the steps, stopped at the door, turned around and went back. he wanted to be a creative rather than an academic. and i bet part of it was that despite his skills as teacher, he never really liked it. he, his colleagues and many thought he was good at it, but he wanted to write teaching, put bread on the table. and according to his biography, he and my mother, who also worked as a teacher and now i'll i'll do the shout out. my mother took classes here at hunter in the 1930s to get her teachers certificates. there's no record that she got a bachelor's, so i don't know how many years you had to take at hunter in the thirties to become

a teacher. so they both had teacher salary during the depression. so you can imagine that they helped a lot with both families and i'm going to say a little bit more about communist party from the history. alan strecker during most vibrant periods, the communist had been at the center of a dynamic left wing world, composed of dozens organizations, labor unions, dance professional societies, refugee relief organizations, adult education, summer camps, legal defense groups, choral societies, tenants committees, bookstores, theatrical peace groups. folk music clubs, ethnic and fraternal societies, literary magazines and dad. as a member of local five of the teachers union became involved in many cultural. and i'm going to read you a poem he wrote that actually used at american federation teachers conventions where marching hand in hand with labor in a rising tide teacher neighbor marching side by side where one big union

crossed the nation build. the afp democracy and education education for democ racy. there's another verse i'm going to skip over. notice the reference to one big union that was the theme of the old iww which describes the future government once rotten system had been overthrown as one big industrial union when ravaged the family, it seemed he could make us laugh all the time. he would do impressions. he would sounds. he could open a bottle, he would be a dog, he would be a puppy. he created stories with all sorts of characters and we went away to camp. he'd send us postcard cards with drawings of them while teaching full time people him as always, writing his first book of poetry was published 1929, and in it is a sonnet too. and my mother, dad once told me that mom told him when they first met that she was french

canadian. boy, he surprised when he called her up that fall and was greeted by the yiddish accented english of her mother. on the other hand, mom's family was worried that she'd brought home agoi because he couldn't speak yiddish. love it and you learn something. day i always thought mom was born in 1910 and that when they married she was a mere 19. oh, the biographer has found her birth certificate. she was born in 1908 and she was 21 when they married you. something every day that began lifelong partnership. they worked together throughout their lives. often he would the plays or a cantata she would direct. dad once said he wondered if mom could have had full acting career, had he not dominated their life choices. in fact, i'm getting a bit ahead of myself. mom was probably the first person to perform fruit as a song at teachers union gatherings. i think is the man who discovered the steps from initial contribution composer to

billie holiday and let him say anything he wants to about that. one more. i already said it. the thing about and hunter college now and of dad poking fun at oppressors. he wrote a song which he called the southern and my daughter me. i've got to say a little bit about it. i sing it. paul how many people know what the southern poll tax was? oh, a large percentage. those of you who don't. it was a way of sure, black people couldn't vote. had to pay a poll tax. and by the way, an lot of poor white people were not knocked out of voting as well because of the poll tax. so here it goes. mr. chairman, on the question of the southern poll tax, i want to tell you all it's very old tax. my pappy used to have it and his pappy did before. and everybody's pappy long before the civil war. now, the with you all is that you all don't understand. everybody's happy in a happy dixieland. so stop this agitating. let the good old poll tax. be i learned love the sunny

south the same way you love me. bom bom, bom coated tar and feather will protect from the weather. you'll learn to love the south. they have the laws of antebellum this are all that. you can smell them. you'll learn to the south. that's southern fried chicken, corn, liquor and grits. and some pappy gave me. that brings epileptic fits. oh, the politics of stink and. you get thrown in jail for thinking you learn to love the south. and if you ever get out of jail, you riding on the rail, you'll learn to love the south. way down upon the swanee river. far, far away. push it further. now, if actually look at the words instead of the the sort of performance, it isn't all that funny. got a hell of an edge to it. and that brings me to my last point. dad was angry when he described why he wrote strange fruit. he said he wrote it quote because i hate lynching and i

hate the people who do it. and that line was very important to. me and i thank joel. he put it in the film, he put me in there saying that one of the funniest people i ever knew in my life was also one of the angriest people i knew in my life. in summary, the man who wrote first strange fruit was a first generation american born jewish immigrants fleeing a.c. semitic violence in the old country. he grew up with socialist vibes in his family. he early on discovered a way with words and a love music, taking piano lessons allowed him to make some money playing chords. cambridge, mass. i already said that he became a schoolteacher continue to live at home, joined teachers union in the communist party. he saw the parallels, the treatment of -- in europe and the treatment of blacks not only in the south as the picture of the two young men that was indiana. and finally a picture of a

lynching called forth. the poem bitter fruit. the poem that became strange fruit. the song song. and that leads us to the transition to the next speaker who will be introduced by our. hello. so, david is a veteran journalist and frequent contributor to newsweek vanity fair, the new york times book review, the new york times review of books for several years. he a weekly column for the new york times entitled the bar. among his books are dreadful the short life and gay of john horn burns beyond glory. joe louis versus max schmeling and a world on the brink undo influence. the epic battle for the johnson and johnson fortune. elizabeth and hazel, two women of little rock study of two women associated with the

disagree gation crisis surrounding little rock central school in 1957 and strange fruit. the biography of a song which chronicles the history and cultural relevance of the song. margolick is at work on a book about sid caesar and your show of shows to be published by ashokan random house. please give a warm welcome to david margolick. well well. thanks very much for that. nice introduction and thanks. i think to michael for an impossible act to follow. i don't have any song to sing. for one thing. i want to thank harold and paul for inviting me to this wonderful event and reminding me already of the the world that i enjoyed when i wrote my book about strange fruit and.

i feel as if i'm back in that world again today for the first time in a long time. and it's it's conjuring up lots of happy memories for me. it was sort of an accidental book. i was always intrigued with the song. i remember seeing it on an album jacket. just one of these things that would list a few of the songs in the album and and i thought, i didn't know what strange fruit was i had no idea what it meant where it came from what the fruit referred to. and so probably like a lot of people have i was blown away when i heard the song. i mean, no one had really prepared me for it. and so it's great to be thinking about all of these things again on this occasion when paul offered me a chance, participate in this, i immediately wondered how get back into a topic i

wrote about so long ago 25 years ago and my mind fashioned on a tiny advertisement in an old magazine. that magazine was the new yorker and the was one of those mini rectangles that used to be stacked in the of the magazine mostly for weddings, bands and pork pie hats. it ran in. march 1939 and it read have you heard strange fruit growing on southern trees. sung by billie holiday, a cafe society. i first saw this ad at the lincoln center and library, a scrapbook of the for cafe society at the hip nightclub on sheridan square that billed itself famous as the wrong place for the right people.

it was this ad first. it didn't get the name of song right, and then it mangled the lyrics. strange fruit on southern trees. but that i found the notice. extraordinary. eerie. it was something never seen before. an advertisement for song. not for billie holiday, who was already a popular young performer at the peak of her powers or for her repertoire, but for a single song, she was singing a song unusual enough in and of itself, to go down to greenwich to hear. for me, it offered corroboration, reassuring corroboration that had been elusive up to that point of the premise of my project that strange fruit was unique an event in and of itself why so

elusive? because there was so out there about it true in that predict little age it was much harder to find anything about anything from that far back type strange fruit, various databases. now and you'll come up with more but still surprisingly little. it had fallen the cracks. there was almost in the mainstream press about it. the new york times for instance, which is everybody's go to paper for anything historic, hadn't covered something. so and angry and disruptive and left of center. a song written by a communist and sung by a young, opinionated black woman. the daily news and the hearst papers of course ignored it all together. they were to right wing, even the more liberal press of the day. and in that day, in new york,

that meant principally as incredible as it seems. now, the new york post treaded lightly. there was even, amazingly, in the black press, which was conservative and culturally cautious as much as it covered lynching. it was more comfortable culturally with duke ellington and ella fitzgerald than with billie holiday. none. the leading black weeklies like the pittsburgh and the chicago defender devoted stories to strange. the few references them in it in these papers to it were passing and awkward like the amsterdam news calling it a swell of propaganda. there was nothing in the newsreels of course they played in, among other places, the south, and even had the radio broadcasts of that era have been preserved, which they mostly weren't. there have been little on them,

on the song, in the stations weren't playing many records in those days. much of the music on the air was performed live. and even in new york they played popular, upbeat stuff, quote w any w has been to get up the courage to allow billie holiday's singing at cafes to render anti-lynching song strange fruit growing on the trees down south. couldn't get it right either. to render the anti-lynching song strange fruit growing on the trees down south. on one of the nightspots regular broadcast broadcasts, the post reported. in november 1939, station termed turned thumbs down a week ago, approved the number for last night's airing. then it said no again, but has agreed to let billie it tonight at 1:00. if billie sing it at one that

night. there's no record of it. have you heard strange fruit growing on southern trees sung billie holiday, a cafe society. the new yorker had asked, and the short answer, even among new yorker readers, would almost always have been no. but that publicist knew what he was doing. the new yorker's readers largely middle to upper class, well-educated sophisticated, politically progressive, white were strange fruits target audience. though cafe society was officially integrated, look at a picture of holiday performing there. it's my book everyone is well dressed. the women in the men lots of them college boys it seems in jackets, ties and all of them white. no such ads for strange fruit ran in the amsterdam news. the great historian, the jazz

and blues albert murray put it best and most and, most bluntly. strange fruit was something he said that most blacks didn't need and didn't want to hear. they knew about it already. strange fruit had bigger moral and sentimental impact among white liberals, mainly northern liberals and do gooders than among blacks. northerners, he told me, you don't celebrate new year's over chitlins and champagne with strange fruit you don't get next to someone playing strange fruit. who the hell wants to hear something that reminds them of a lynching in his world? count basie's blue and center, mental and not strange fruit was the big that year for those got to hear billie holiday sing fruit at café society. it was certainly an event and as decreed by barney josephson, the

man who ran the place, it was also a ritual. billie was to close all three of her nightly sets with it as she prepared to sing it all service. waiters. cashier. nurse. busboys all stood still. the room went completely dark. save for a pin on holiday's face. when she finished the lights went out when she back out. when she. when they came up. she was gone. and no matter how thunderous the applause, she was never to return for a bow. my instruction was to off. period. joseph's recalled. people had to remember strange fruit, get their insides burned by it. it was a beautifully rendered thing, like a great dramatic moment. the theater. one of the people in the audience. one night, the cartoonist al

hirschfeld remembered, and it struck me. i don't think al hirschfeld drew, billie holiday singing strange fruit, but she was painting her own picture that night. it didn't it didn't need any elaborating. she at all and i'm just amazed that every time i hear the song i hear something new in it and i'm so i'm grateful to paul for playing it because i never noticed before that it gets out. she gets louder as it goes along it gets louder and more intense and fiercer as she goes along. of course, things rarely so neat. the old cbs sports reporter haywood hale broun. some of you will remember for his colorful sports coats told me the angst was the angst at café society when billie sang strange fruit, in fact, quite short lived after we'd oohed and odd in our kind of liberal way. the band would hit a sharp chord

and then go into them. their eyes, he recalled. the setting was the problem. even an enlightened nightclub was still a nightclub. i wondered then it made sense to sing such a song in such a milieu. one of bruins classmates said it belonged instead in the concert setting without beer and whiskey and cigaret smoke on april. 1939, holliday backed by eight musicians as michael and paul have said, made the first recording of strange fruit overseeing the session was the aforementioned milt gabler of commodore records, who doubles as billy uncle, who assumed the task after. a skittish columbia records past the song. gabler gave holliday $400 for the four songs she recorded that. day one of them fine and mellow, which is on flip side and $1,000

later on how much she eventually earned from the song. he couldn't say. we used to give her cash, especially when she was in trouble right out of the cash in the store. he. we never really kept a record it. that record the one that we just heard differs dramatically. the several versions that ensued the course of billie holiday's career, most notably the verve recording of 1956 and the film performance made in london shortly before holliday died, which at this point is probably the most familiar version. those later iterations volumes about holliday and the life. she went on to live but obscure how radical the song the singer originally had been that day in the studio. billie holiday, all of 24 years old, was jaunty, cocky, defiant,

proud. there is no weeping nor histrionics. her tone was languorous, unflinching, raw yet smooth, youthful, yet worldly, spitting out reference to southern gallantry and fragrant magnolias. i even noticed the way, she said, sweet and fresh fresh. she radiated contempt rather than anger or grief. no longer would you have to go down to sheridan to hear strange fruit. there's now the record. this is about phonograph record, which is obsessed me for two days. samuel grafton, again, of the new york post, wrote. october 1939. it is called strange fruit and it will, even after the 10th hearing, make blink and hold on to your chair. even now as i think of it the short hair on the back of my neck tightens and.

i want to hit somebody and i think. i know who it was. grafton went on a fantastically powerful piece of art. one which reversed the usual relationship between a black entertainer, owner and her white audience. i have been entertaining you. she seemed. she seems to say. now you just listen to me. the polite conventions. and this is still grafton speaking. the polite conventions between race race are gone. it is as if we heard what was spoken in the cabins after the knight riders clattered by if the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the south, it now has its marseilles. but if strange fruit wasn't music to dance by. nor was it music to march to. even milt gabler conceded it was a downer, at least initially. its appeal was more limited. even rarefied, the people who

bought record were the same folks read w.e.b. dubois in crisis and knew masses listened to the almanac singers they marched for and in some cases off to loyalist spain. they were disproportionately jewish, as were for that matter. meeropol we've already heard about josephson, the man who staged that of café society, eddie and milt gabler. strange was yet another of those wonderful black jewish collaborations yore which by definition meant it wasn't part of the mainstream. it's cult status makes it fanciful that that federal narcotics agents even listen to it, let alone hounded holiday for it. as a recent book and movie has have represented and as lewis porter refuted in jazz in an article in jazz times, that claim is no truer than.

the suggestion in the in the film ladies sings the blues that wrote strange fruit herself after happening upon a lynching while touring in the south, meeropol worked assiduously in his last years, remind people that it was he -- who'd written it. and when you go through the clippings and the files, you see many letters to the editor that he was forever saying this was mine. i did it. holiday kept singing it, though she was selective about where limiting it to new york and other big northern cities progressive nightclubs concert and black theaters demanding. attention. whenever she did stalking off sometimes when she didn't get that attention. i only do it for people who might understand and appreciate it, she told daddy-o daily. the chicago jockey who'd sneak the song onto his playlists

sometimes say a local cop beat a black kid for running a red light. this is not a june moon tune, she explained. even in these friendly venues, the occasional redneck in and there'd be trouble and she'd give performances of the song for special friends like studs terkel serenading serenade hitting him with it at the party marking his departure from world war two. when terkel spoke to me about strange fruit, he had to reach back two centuries to schubert's winterreise and, the song about the hurdy gurdy man cranking his instrument with fingers to find another song so devastating. holiday performed strange on a european tour in 1954 that may

have inspired over there in france to the song into french, but that's as far as it ever. quote with, all the troubles the french are currently having with colored people in indochina and north africa. i do not think it will be possible get a major recording of. french song publisher wrote meeropol. so even over there it caused trouble. not everyone loves strange. not all not all liberals love strange fruit. john hammond called it the worst thing that ever happened to billie holiday. it made her the darling of left wing intellectuals. he complained leading her to take herself to seriously. but with every defeat, she suffered with every additional increment abuse she endured or inflicted on herself, the more personal and even autobiographical the song came to seem, only the end when it seemed to take too much of her.

and there was less for it anyway. did her performances it taper off by then and forever forward with everyone. nina simone to diana ross. to cassandra wilson. cassandra wilson to audra mcdonald to you be 40 to sting singing it. it radiated through the culture, touching, aroused and inspiring a much broader, diverse audience than it did when first appeared. that's presumably why, 60 years after dismissing it as, quote, a prime piece of propaganda for the acp time magazine been crowned the song of the century since the since billie holiday introduced it. our capacity to be shocked has shrunk. taboos have disappeared and novelty itself has grown more novel. but always there will be this unique and uncanny song.

the song that was also an event. the question is no longer have you heard fruit, but this strange fruit ever happened since and will should or could a strange fruit ever happen again? thank you. our next speaker be speaker will be margo jefferson a graduate of columbia university school of journalism. margo jefferson was an associate editor at newsweek and an assistant professor of journalism at nyu university before joining joining the staff of the new york times in 1993. there, she wrote about books, theater and american culture in general for her first book reviews and other cultural. to quote the pulitzer prize selection committee.

jefferson was awarded the pulitzer prize for criticism in 1995. jefferson and is the author of on michael jackson, as well as two memoirs constructing nervous system and negroland, which 2016 won the national book critics circle award for autobiography and was shortlisted for the gifford prize for nonfiction. her work regularly in numerous publications harper's vogue, the nation and the guardian. she teaches writing columbia university. jefferson has long had an interest in jazz and appeared in ken burns's ten part documentary film entitled jazz. please welcome. margo jefferson. thank you very much. are these david indeed? may not malvasia. okay. well, i very proud to be in this company and i hired several of the quote i was going to read.

i am already being done because i are i okay. i am very proud to be in this company. several of the passages i was going to read have already read and claimed not to mention. no, it's fine. not to mention the perspective of both mr. and mr. margolick. so i going to focus in part on it's historical. it's place in the evolving history of of jazz, which which the term itself always debated. so. all right. just a little cultural placement, a little repeating. from the left. a popular song collab, creation of jewish and black artists and,

progressives to word and and radical leftists. the idea that it made way from the rcp mag, the communist party magazine would not publish it right from okay. they wouldn't. but teachers union it made way from the teacher's union on the left to barney josephson, who was a leftist nightclub owner to popular to do popular music, is its own way. phenomenal american music does many things wonderfully, but it's that that space we often call nightclub music or, tin pan alley or a musical theater really tends specialize in its

most serious subject to be love and romance. so in just in way alone, this is extraordinary. i was trying to think of a predecessor and i will happily take other not again from folk, but from this popular. we must somehow or another make money while we're making art and all could think of was brother, can you spare a dime from 1930 to now? yep. the lyricist was also leftist. don't know if he was a cpa. was he? we know not. this is all still a little secret. the annals, but the big difference. i'm sure a number of you who knows this song brother can you spare a dime? yeah, of course. of course you do. so know. you know, it's. it's. it's. it's dramatic. it's also a plea. no, there is more in fulness there. there is need.

it was also, you know, it's being as it was based on the demonstrate writers veterans in front of the white house who were who wanted their bonus pay in the midst of the depression when the government turned its troops against them but they were it would have been assumed and i'm sure it was true they were almost entirely white i suspect any black veterans who had joined this might have been arrested and beaten up rather more severely. but in any case, the the difference is between a dramatic stick plea that you to empathize and to to to pity and to bring generosity and change of heart out of that that pity and maybe some guilt. this david said, is an anthem. strange fruit. it is also a kind of initiation

ritual into horrors. it something it's a poem, but it also has something in common with documentary witnessing. it could, in its own way, be a film, and it is in its way, an exorcism. now that sets up. well, it was framed in very cleverly and theatrically and and i think even morally well claimed as a song had to be performed inside lence and whose who's singer who's who's a bard if you will who's who's witness closed her eyes when david was talking, i thought to myself, you know, the discourse dances between even a progressive and or a liberal. all white, well-heeled, the singer stage and the of that song, the discordance clashes

must be so acute sometimes. closing her eyes was an emotional in terms of almost detaching oneself from the audience in the setting. and then but then the end of it she disappears. i in there, there's something i don't want to say unsavory but that that that that strain cohabitation between ritual political testimony declamation and entertainment this is something we very much struggle with today in relationship to art and politics and how they collaborate or clash so it seems to me in that way to prefigure very much struggles that figures

much later for a look someone like bob dylan. i'm first he's first he's very serious and leftist then now that's not what i do. i do other things and he gets really just margo leave it a lot. but i was talking to an artist just the other about even the most even even a mixed kind of experimental musician like you know thelonious monk was you put on the cover of time magazine and you know what is the relationship, the seriousness of your music and your popularity. so holliday as a very young singer, when she records this, is already navigating that. the new york post quotes that david read, you know, my god, suddenly she's saying, you listen to me for a while.

this is racial. this is huge. but it is also very much gendered. you this is a black woman who is described in one of the quotes in your book as who is it? was it time who said she's a roly poly -- woman? yeah. yeah. time magazine. you know, these were the days when one could speak of a particularly a black woman, even if she was famous, gifted in just that way. i forget which magazine ran and when ella fitzgerald was hefty, got stuck in an elevator shaft. and then had to be helped out. chubby -- songstress get stuck in elevator shaft. i mean, the the disrespect, you know, of this work of art and entertainment that we are very enjoying the the the the the need to also disrespect and and mark is really. the other thing one of the other

things that's going on with this song once it moves becoming a very you know well best selling record is there is jazz is being taken seriously by some critics but there is still general and even among you know serious music writers this confining and defining of jazz as particularly in the big band era. it's an entertainment music. it's intrinsically linked to dance and has it it has no ability to express certain kinds of subtle and didn't dance complicated emotions that say classical music does. i think a song like this very just slices that down it slices down the notion which again was

still still going that you know many singers don't quite have the diction to deliver the the sustained to deliver this kind of work both in of its content and in turns of its form that languorous salt salty of holidays was great for them their eyes. but how many people had expected that it would somberly serve, you know, as an anthem and and art song and a kind. call when you a call to arms one voice you can take it in. i think that the recordings made a huge difference in terms of how one internalized the song. if you are sitting in a

nightclub with helen brown was right, they are going to play them. their eyes. next, you're going to pick up your glass. it's to tango if you are, you're going to talk to the person next door. maybe you're going to adjust the jacket you're wearing or the fur cape if you're listening to it at home or maybe in a theater, say, in all black theater, where there's a safety there or, you know a theater just full of white and hopefully black and other fans, if that's where you're listening, you're you know, you're to to internal lies to take it in and to walk away thinking about it and thinking through it. my black chicagoans who listen to daddy-o, they they were not they did not go to café society. they did certainly my mother and

friends of hers bought the record. and by the time i came along as a child in the fifties, it was, you know. it was a a sanctioned, you know, a sacred object. if you will of black music, of jazz, of of holiday, of her very particular gifts and skills. wait, i just want to be. sure. yeah, i. okay, let me go back to my point about, about female anger, as you said, your father was angry and he wrote that, wrote this down his words, i hate lynching and i hate the people who do it that is what billie holiday was embodying representing and singing in that very again

control and rigorous and you know incredibly, intense and focus. that's why i partly call it an exorcism way. you know. yes, there's bessie singing in love of careless love. why i sing this song of hate. that is surprising, even in that even in that song. but for for a woman in the world of popular music to be to be so contained can contain oddly meaning in control of her and to be using it as a kind of as a weapon, as a as a call to a weight to an awakening. this is extreme on usual her other her other peers whom. i love i love ella fitzgerald. i love the ones who come a little laughter like sarah

vaughan. but it wasn't done by anybody else. and it wasn't being done at albert mary's. words made clear by the bands of the day, ellington great black bands. i'm thinking. ellington basie, etc. ellington would start writing a kind of race conscious and almost in a sense, estheticism and uplifting music soon. but it wasn't it yet. he hadn't written black brown and beige yet, so she really was very much she was she was in the vanguard. let me point out some of the musicians who i think came after, of course, nina simone has already been mentioned, but whose radicalism comes after? it comes some time after. may i point out? i'm i would certainly that the the bop musicians in their own way were political but they were we're thinking instrumental.

so who is she helping. set the bar for terms of jazz as played equally radical and esthetically daring? okay. think i'm thinking of the fifties. charles mingus fables of faubus. you're holiday's poem made me think of that sonny rollins freedom suite. max and abbey lincoln. we insist, of course. you know nina simone, though not on that first 1959 album, not at all. that doesn't happen till later. so there that's remarkable. now go a little further and think again of venue and, the diff, the difficulties of jazz negotiating itself as complicated and demanding music in god bless them a dance hall

think ahead to the 7080s nineties and you have the loft jazz movement in new york and have the aacm music opens in chicago. excuse me. so you know, all of these connections, all these locations, this locating of of of of the setting, the proper setting and the proper yes, the proper setting for this. and it's the questions of what audio it reaches all of those are going to be taken up. one could even perhaps track, i'm being a little frivolous but just to sit show again how daring she was. miles davis turning his back to the audience that that is a of billie holiday closing her eyes and singing the song and then leaving i turn my back i leave.

i think in certain david's discuss kind of the the culture oral and social complications of of it's and it's its place as this rarefied object that is also a political document and a political stimulant. there is boy i you know i kept saying maybe i won't say this but i think i will when you for example, read accounts of. abolitionist material and novels, early novels at the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, what sometimes up is a it can come up from the opponent love of but a kind of questioning of what somewhat

erotic sexual thrills people reading about these beatings and these abuses of blacks might be stirring up. i think crudely put, usually the the assaults, the attacks, the implicate asians are. but there is no way around when you particularly certainly when you're talking about an attractive black performer certainly you're talking about a woman. this question of how how a work even a work like this gets can eroticized one could argue and i'm very happy i'm not its appearance in wonderful barney joseph since kraut cafe society. but one could argue that almost present it in a certain kind of somewhat glamorized setting gets

it right size. the question then becomes how that eros of youths in terms of the songs purpose, the artist's intent does it patronized it open up spaces think about you all of the feelings from outrage to to eros to analysis that go into our political response in our artistic responses. but you know there there is that air also around the song and its history and billie holiday and her history of of a kind of the you know, the decadence in many ways and the griefs of her life have very much over the years romanticized sentiment to lies, somewhat eroticized. i suspect that that has also happened with strange fruit and that it's often shameful and

embarrassing to people. but it's it might it's it's worth thinking about very interesting that find in mellow is on the other is on the other side. yeah all right think that i think people probably want oh my goodness yes we're close to one to ask everybody questions. so let me finish and. thank you. okay. you're here city. yeah. i'm going to slip away now. i'll take a couple of questions from audience while we're getting settled. what are we think about strange fruit being called by time magazine? the song of the century time particularly after the time the i always my microphone yes particularly after they were so insulting to billie when they

describe the song in 1939 when it came out. well what year did they call it? song of the century? 1999. 1999, yeah. 60 years later. hmm i'm glad they caught up eventually. yeah, yes, yes. so does people have questions from the audience? stevie, come up here. oh, thank you. hello. enjoyed all three of the very excellent presenters and i was shocked to hear from you that the black community and the 19 late thirties and forties did not embrace or consume strange. they did some blacks did consume it. okay. yeah absolutely. that's that's why i mentioned i see my mother and her friends and by the time again was coming up it was absolutely a given by the fifties. but in the forties. and she was also blacks were

buying it. but, you know, the distinct thing he's making is those for know those early years and albert is not completely wrong is not wrong at all and the newspapers could be conservative but there were progressives in black communities as well. i'm my parents left wing bought it first you know and then it moved to the genuine generally liberal ones. so is there disagreement about, the black community and the consumption, the song strange fruit, i mean, i'm hearing two things today. i'm thinking about my parents, for example. so my parents marched on washington. my grandmother born in 1903, they were all very angry and very political. but i don't know this song from my childhood and from being with them and listening to their music, i was aware of strange fruit by nina simone in the i guess the so maybe what we're

hearing is two different desires to different sizes avoiding in the late thirties early forties large of blacks were not buying this record it or we are going to listen know to it or writing about it in newspapers. but as the decade moved on, she found again david mentioned the black theaters that she that she performed it in as the decade went on and moved into the fifties, it found more and more of black listeners and fans. i think the point though that you were making is that early on because it came out of cass cafes the size and we're talking 1939 of a white audience really embraced wouldn't you agree right there just i mean if you go through the black paper is of that era there's nothing there's virtually nothing in there. i mean i through probably a

dozen of them and i could only find these very little fragments and nobody was ever focused on it exclusively in writing stories about it. there was almost more coverage for, fine and mellow than there was for strange and. i point out in my book that three main man on milt gabler, barney josephson, abel meeropol, white jewish liberals, lefties and lefties i mean, that's really that was her base of support early on and billie knew exactly what she was you know she was very much aware of what cafe society represented. and in fact in an interview the mid-forties with pie magazine said she herself was a communist so as i one thing john hammond was always busy. oh well john was busy chastising blacks for a little too lazy if you're a vanderbilt. frankie newton wasn't wasn't a vanderbilt it was yeah but but

frankie newton, whom he said was prissy, a leftist as well. so know. and frankie newton was on that record. yes, he was. yeah. yes, sir. i'm here here. i'm michael meyers in new york, civil rights coalition. my question is to the first part of the discussion in roosevelt. we're in the roosevelt house. i really want to know, was billie holiday ever invited to the white house? yeah, she was. and what were the circumstances and why didn't you not? why did strange fruit and the and the and and the movement of blacks for equality affect. franklin roosevelt, as it affected eleanor roosevelt. yes. she did attend the white house when roosevelt was in the white house. she attended hazel scott, the famous pianist and probably her best friend or one of her best friends. it was it was no, it was a

fundraiser for the infantile paralysis. but she had yearly and they and she actually ran into him in the basement when was in his wheelchair. and they had a conversation. but yes, she was invited to the white house. she did go to the white house and hazel scott went her. yes. franklin roosevelt was never as daringly progressive as his wife, eleanor. we know that eleanor was much more liberal after this brilliant dissection of the song. wouldn't it be appropriate for us to close this session with another hearing of the original performance. i'm sorry. yes. let's get a question over here first. i'm over here. not a lot. c-span wants to. all right, i'm just curious. the new yorker had that ad. so the ad was get people to go to cafe society.

it was an ad for the song, which they got. right. i mean, what was the gist of the new yorker ad? i guess read i read the whole thing that it it was just this little tiny ad and apart from the phone number, chelsea something or other and the address sheridan square, that was the entire ad. it was just a little tiny reminder that that billie was singing this song, cafe society. it was really advertisement for the song at society, man, it not yet a record. when she started to sing it. you mentioned billie holiday led us to believe that she was the writer and it's still in the current version of lady sings the blues. you go by the autobiography. it's still in there. it is not true that. but that's my question whether at any point she acknowledged that. well what she did after that she well she's very possessive of

the song she loved this song. i mean, she was very possessive of it. and so what she was satelite iran it was a song written especially me, which was also not true. my question is. whether that. in the very back thank you i have my hands up the longest time like a billy joel regarding billie holiday. does anyone know why where she was born. yes. she died. yes when she died. how she died? yes. you want me to cover that. i just did that. billie thought she was born in baltimore her family. told her she was born in baltimore, and she didn't find out that she was actually born in philadelphia until 1954, when she got her passport to do her 54 european tour and. she goes, i was born in philadelphia. who know? but again, she continued, tell

everybody she was born in baltimore even after she knows she was born in philadelphia. so even though she was born in philadelphia, her mother brought to baltimore when she was a, you know, like a few days. and so she was actually raised in baltimore until was, i'd say 12 ish. and then she moved to new york to, well, first to harlem, then to queens, then back to harlem. yeah, yes. oh, death. she died and july of 1959, on the 17th, she had become ill about six weeks beforehand, they had hospitalized, hospitalized her at metropolitan hospital up in harlem and there ensued a hall, which i cover in great detail in my book a whole drama because, as she said, when got

in there, she's going to arrest me on my deathbed, you know. and sure enough, they did. they plant in my they planted heroin in room and she was arrested for narcotics possession. she was fingerprinted mug shot the whole thing. and so last 2 to 3 weeks of her life was really taken up with having do i mean, they were trying to they wanted to appear before a grand jury. she was bedridden. she literally couldn't get out bed. and they wanted to appear before a grand jury and and florence flo kennedy was her lawyer that time and did a great job and a lot of the attempts that the city government was trying to do new york's behavior was shameful at that time. the police department, the mayor's office and she eventually died of cirrhosis of the liver. that was the cause of death. the trigger, a heart attack. but i would say that the way she

was harassed at the end of her life, had a significant effect on her. it's almost if she had sort of gave up the will to live because of what was going on that was the last question. what was the naacp's take on the did they accept it rejected? i mean, what was their view of, you know, i don't remember any reaction from the naacp i think that instinctively they probably have steered clear of it. it would have just been too left for them. i mean, in my experience, margot, you know, i know. but i, i actually with that. yeah, but it was not the the cultural, the leftist cultural among blacks when they were progressive at the time. but the song was taken up by the anti-lynching movement. it was delivered to every member of. david you might know the year it happened. i don't remember what year, but

it was when they were trying to consider anti-lynching bill, which they'd been trying since. well and joe biden's signed it. i did story once about the man who more than anyone else was responsible for integrating stuyvesant town. and he was he another former communist in fact that unwra generated communist and he had awful he was written out of the acp and thurgood thurgood marshall was very determined to get him nowhere close to the end of acp they wanted communists they didn't want to be saddled with anything smacking of communism. that's right. that's right. that is true. first, let's thank our panelists for today today. and i think i think our suggestion from the audience is a good one was end with billie

singing fruit once again. should we sit down we can come down here.

some country is better with strange fruit blood on the knees and bloody at the root. black bodies swinging in the sun no free strange hanging from the poplar tree. pastor rose seen of the gallon

so no bulging i send that twisted. sent magnolia magnolia sweet and strange then the sudden smell no burning flesh here a fruit for them grow to pluck for the rain together for the wind to suck, for the sun to. for the tree to drown. here is a stray.

and me to. cry cry.