and i appreciate not just him, but everybody else. that's come out to see this and the i think south carolina museum, confederate relic room. i'm an old guy, but i'm not a relic yet for this opportunity today here. so thank you very much. good morning, >> good morning everyone. good morning. [applause] i am harold holzer and i have the privilege of serving as directorki and speaking for and

kurshner to present at the college and i want to welcome all of you to this historic place for this amazing convening that we are having and two greetings to the c-span audience which will be privileged to see the eventwe we have to bring to this morning and it's a truly extraordinary one. not only a chance to honor and that opportunity to honor the unsurpassable the billie holliday but to do so in the longtime home of her favorite american president franklin d roosevelt. i haven't seen paul's book yet but i will find validation in his brand-new book in the brand-new book by air convener and host paul alexander is really what brings us together so i'm going to hold it up. it's at an extraordinary new

account of billie holliday's final year. does that look a like an album cover?ve it's a brilliant concept and i love it. welcome also to michael mariupol and margot severson. as of last night we had more than 1200 people registered either in person or on line for this event. [applause] we have never had a response quite like this. i have a feeling it's mostly for subsixteen -- billy. i would imagine it's for you too. some of you may then overflow rooms so stay tuned because the conversation in the commentary in the performance is going to be truly amazing.

again billie really liked fdr and maybe because fdr was the firstco president to bring contemporary music and his favorite singer may have been kate smith. at least that's what he told kate smith and the king of england during a visit to hyde park but maybe he had cooler taste when he would stay here in town because he was and he ran his presidential campaign from there. fdr was the first presidential campaign candidate to choose his campaign song from a modern source happy days arein here agn in 1930 musical called chasing rainbows. i looked for the ultimate connection that the composer and lyricist mike a song and they didn't succeed but i did try.

and it's also notable that during the new deal which was planned upstairs in fdr's library during the presidential transition of 1932 and 33 a small house in one small room served the transition quarters for that four-month period. during that time the administration that was incoming conceived the idea of her release program not only put farms and factory workers back on the job but also for the first time provided federal support to writers artist and musicians. so those are the connections and speaking of writers i do want to know which paul alexander is a treasured teacher here at hunter

and hunterdon this is the second symposium. last year he presented a symposium on sylvia plat which was the norm as we well received in those sessions are available perpetually from the roosevelt house web site. be assured you will be able to pick up a copy of stairs during the break and our special guest thisis morning. so paul thank you for everything you did to bring us here and i invite youle to please take it away ladies and gentlemen let's welcome margot severson and paul alexander. >> welcome everyone. i'm the author of this book and

first of all disappearance from billieie at her recording sessin as harold said he was her favor president and eleanor was friends with billie and who are the children who often went to see her between 39 and 41. there was a strong connection with the roosevelt which made lot of sense and so for having this symposium for here -- her here today. my book is different from a lot of what has been said and written about billie the past and she's often portrayed as a victim or a failure and i see

her quite differently and to picture quite differently in my book. i say her for what she was. she was a powerful woman who overcame the hardships of our lives life to create a body of work in a preeminent jazz singer and an american icon so that's my take on billie holliday and the other depictions of her through the years are valid i suppose that i had a quite different point of view. that's reflected in my book and in my talk here today. obviously "strange fruit" is her most famous song. she recorded it 1939 and i wanted to talk a little bit about the song and how it came about and then by doing that i

talk about an oddity ofie billys billy's -- billie's and it was her unique ability to fabricate episodes from her life or at least enhance them so she did that with "strange fruit" and her autobiography which came out in 56 and is still available today. i read the following in her autobiography billie described how the song and this from her book the of the tomb of the poem was written by lewis allan and i first met him and when he showed me the poem allan suggested my company is to indict turned into music but the three of us got together and did the job in

about three weeks. and danny mandelson another writer did the arrangements for me and he helped me with arranging the song and were it patiently. and that passage may have been provided, may provide it a tale for the audience to relish. none of the facts were true. [laughter] none of them. the creator of the song is michael wells knows is michael meeropol born and raised in russian jewish family. the college yearbook declared him a gifted poet and a genius. he had a master's in arts from english literature department the university. english teacher at dewitt clinton high school said michael

meeropol was a member of the communist party. having joined around 1932. he contributed to the young communist theater arts committee and the lincoln brigade which is why he chose to publish under the pseudonym lewis allan in homage to his stillborn son who would have been seven that they need not wish his leftist politics to interfere with his ability turn al, living. still he was sympathetic to the parties advocacy for equality and supporting his federally anti-legislation. throughout thehe jim crow era posed a danger to especially in the south. in the 1930s it was a concerted effort to pass legislation in the u.s. congress to the practice. mariupol saw this as an opportunity to contribute to the uncle debate. when he ran across the picture

in the civil rights magazine way back in the early 30s he said i saw photographs of the lynching published inne the magazine devoted to the exposure and elimination of injustice. it was a shocking photograph and it haunted me for days. end quote. the picture of two black teenagers, shift and -- and 1930 was taken by lawrence bechtler and that's the end of my quote from the book. let me point out the federal anti-lynching legislation would not be passed for almost one full century until it was finally signed into law by president joe biden. and now recorded in 1939 by the

commoner records here is the original version of "strange fruit." ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

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♪♪ ♪♪ the chairman of the committee who ran for symposium julie rosenberg. [applause] >> good morning everyone. i'm an economist educator and author per for many years he was department chair of western new england. after his retirement they are the top for four years of john jay college of criminal justice in the city city of the neighbors in your pick among his his books tomp surrender how the clinton administration completed

the reagan revolution. "strange fruit" is the biological son of a julius and - "strange fruit." he and his brother were adopted by able "strange fruit" veers "strange fruit" had written about his biological parents edited the rosenberg letters and prison correspondence and authored we are your son. inin addition mariupol had writn and lecturedra extensively about "strange fruit" is an anthem for social reform appearing in the story for protest a documentary. to speak about able mariupol noon during power of "strange fruit" please welcome michael meeropol. first of all i want to thank carol and paul for including me on this fabulous distinguished panel. it's wonderful to sit next to

david and it's an absolute honor to share the stage with them. i met my father when i was 10 years old christmas eve 1953. my brother and i began livingeg with dad and during the next seven years before i went away to college i had the good fortune to live an extraordinary and privilege life. robbie and i won the lottery withiv our adopted parents. during those years and subsequent leaders from timee to time i would learn things about dowd's life that led me to the inescapable conclusion that he was the most extraordinary humaa being. intelligent funny kind loving talented. since he died in 1986 high of learn even more about him from the work of musicologist nancy baker. david's book was an whose an audience in my father's biographer and they forget to me

to my presentation i'm going to try to keep to time limit i want to acknowledge the works of all the folks. nancy baker publish an article entitleds able meeropol aka les allan political commentator in the journal of american music in 2002. i'm not sure if it's on the payroll or not on line but you can find it in some libraries anyway. david's work will be frontfr and center after i finished talking and joel -- entitled "strange fruit" is available on screening services canopy and on demand and i can't speak enough about it to even though i was in the eye can't speak enough about it andly finally there's an exhaustively researched full-length biography of my father by a man named david has been working on it for a years and he has an agent and he's

searching for publisher previews on twitter andtt instagram and u can't make this stuff up writes a called the philosophy of shaving. i have never read the and i've read the book and it's pretty good. i will try to distill what i've learned from these four important points of information as well as my memory of dad. to talk about the man as he grew to be the person who wrotee max "strange fruit" said set it to music and then played it for billie holliday. five things, one you have heard he was the son of immigrants from russia and he saw the connection between the oppression of the jewish throughout history this entry is a common is having decided based on what he saw around him as a child the working-class immigrant and the first dude two decades the last century with the system he lived under was

unjust. he was very creative with a keen sense of humor and a feel for music although he never had any formal music training. he took panel lessons when he was younger when he was at harvard he had a gig in a band. they never let him play a solo. five very important he was angry. his sense of injustice didn't make him bad it made him mad. his mother whispered with him him while the two older children made the trek to a from nerc city. my grandfather anglicized julio had experienced at least one problem in kyiv ukrainian province of the russian empire. the michael meeropol postmark or atheist socialist and spoke russian, not yiddish and very important for those of you who knew about the edition ways of

jewish immigrants after 1880. most of them were yiddish people including my other three sets of grandparents. their connection between anti-semitism and second-class citizenship. as i said he survives kyiv where he was from. hise. wife sophie and we ask all their sonia grew up in odessa and was probably middle-class because a family owned a pharmacy. she lived on the second floor there and she spoke russian. she had taken university classes. she had undoubtedly survived in odessa ass well. dad was aware of anti-semitism he once told the authorities when he was at harvard and was he with was with the villagers didn't and as he turned around

and for those of you who don't know what it means this is making fun of jews because we talk with their hands or my father made an impression on him. he grew up in new york and he had that personal triggering of anti-semitism before being yanked cambridge massachusetts when he went there to harvard. i'veed w are liked this was an anti-semitic trope and it was a lot better than beating them up. it stayed with them long enough for him to mention it to me. upon by the wrote in five months very short made that connection both nancy baker's article and david doucet's book. i am a jew how do i know? the lynching reminds me well i am a jew. early in our lives their mom and dad told robbie and me a story

about how dad confronted a cop seemed totally uninterested in getting medical help for a black man who had been injured. dad race such as was arrested and the night in jail. mom told me this was raphael at jewish cop and the anchor in your voice was clear. how do your a jew be a and as we know, unfortunately [inaudible] luckily dad didn't get into a fight with a cop and one night in jail. he became a communist. he was a high school student during world war i and his father or brother had to register for the draft. he didn't obviously he was too young but he knew about the russiann revolution and the russian civil war where the armies massacred jews in a new the new soviet union had given jews in the soviet union full stop citizenship. he also knew because it was 1919

and he was 16 years old a well read high school citizen about the race riots that led to uniform uniform people being. because his parents were atheist and he had no form or the strength hee didn't have the throw off the religious rejection to communism to that cap many americans from embracing the left but as a child of atheist. he wasly relatively rare for first-generation american jews. as paul mentioned he probably joined the communist party from 1932 although there's no record of when you join the party. they know we join the party because he spoke at length to robbie and me about his activities. he always told us a story and he filled out an application for a ph.d. program in english literature called the university went up the steps stopped at the door turned around and went

back. he wanted to be a creator rather than an academic and i think part of it despite his skills as a teacher he never liked it. his colleagues and many students thought he was good at it but he always wanted to write prep teaching put bread on the table according to his biographer he and my mother who was also a teacher and a shout-out my mother took classes here at hunter in the 1930s to get her teacher's certificate. there's no record that she got a bachelor's degree so i don't know how many yearse you had to take at hunter in the 30s to become a teacher. they both had teacher salaries during the depression. you can imagine it helped a lot with the families. i want to say more about the. during its most vibrant period become his party had been at the center of the dynamic left-wing world composed of dozens of organizations favor union's dance grooves professional societies refugee relief

organizations of the old education centers summer camp's legal groups coral societies bookstores theatrical troupes music clubs ethnic and paternal societies andd dad as a member f the teachers union became involved in many cultural activities and i'm going to read you a poem he wrote that was used as an american federation of teachers convention. they are marching hand-in-hand with labor and a rising tide, teacher parent neighbor marching side-by-side. we are one big union across the nation built the ast democracy and education and education for democracy. there is t another person i'm going to skip over. notice the reference to one big union. that was the theme of the old iww which described a future government once the system was overthrown as one big industrial union. when robbie and i joined the family it seemed he could make

us laugh all the time. he would do impressions and he would make sounds pretty good open a bottle and he would see a puppy and he created stories with also to characters in one went to camp he would send us postcards with drawings. for teaching full-time people describe him as always writing took his first book of poetry was published in 1929 in a net is a sonnet and kill my mother. dad once told me that mom told them when they first met she was french-canadian. boy was he surprised when he surprised when he called her up that paul and was greeted by the addition accented english upper mother. on the t other hand mom's family was worried that she had brought home some in the couldn't speak yiddish and you learn something every day. our side mom was born in 1910 and when they married she was a mere 19 to the biographer is founder per certificate and she

was born in 1908 so she was 21 when they married. you learn something every day. that began a lifelongg partnership. they work together throughoutth their lives. he would write the flies -- plays and she would direct them. he wondered if mom could have had a full acting career had he dominated her life choice. i'm getting a bit ahead of myself. mom was probably the first to perform "strange fruit" is a song at gatherings. i think david is the man who discovered the steps from initial contribution to competition to build late holiday -- to billie holliday. an example of bad poking fun he wrote a song which was called the southern senator and my daughter tells me to talk about it before seeing it. how many people know what the southern poll tax was? a large percentage but for those

who don't is a way of make sure -- making sure black people couldn't vote. onn the question of the southen poll tax i want to tell you all everybody is past before the civil war. you won't understand everybody's happy in a happy dixieland so this agitating with the full text be in there to love the sunny south the same way you love me. you learn to love the south. the loss of antebellum and after i can them and you learn to love this out to love the south. at southern fried chicken corn liquor and grits gives you a epileptic fits. the politics of thinking you get thrown in jail for thinking and you learn to love the south. if you get out of jail you go riding on the rail you learn to love the south.

way down upon the sewanee river, far, far away. push it further. [laughter] [applause] out if you actually look at the words instead of the performance isn't all that funny and it has an edge to it and that brings me to my last point. my dad was angry. and he described it he said he wrotee it because i lynching and i the people who do it and that line was very important. i thanks joel. he put it in the film saying they were one of the funniest people i knew in my life was also one of the anchors people i've ever known in my life. in summary the man who wrote the first "strange fruit" was a first-generation american-born jewish immigrant fleeing anti-semitic violence but he

grew up up with socialists of fives in this family. he earned and discovered a wayth with words and the love of music taking piano lessons and playing chords in cambridge massachusetts became a school teacher continued this is home joined the teachers union in the commonest party. there was a parallel between the treatment of jews inop europe in the treatment of not only in the south is the picture of the two young men in indiana finally a picture of a lynching called for the poem "bitter crop" and that leads us to the next speaker david margolick who was introduced. [applause]

>> david margolick's a veteran journalist and frequent nature "bridgerton" "newsweek" "vanity fair" "new york times" book review "new york times" review of books but for several years he wrote a weekly column for the neck times entitled at the bar. among his books are the short hornsnd times of john berg beyond glory joe lewis and the world on the brink on to influence thefl epic battle for the johnson & johnson -- elizabeth and hazel to women of little rock a study of two women associated with a desegregation crisis surrounding little rock central high schoolsc in 1957 ad "strange fruit" the biography of the song which chronicles the history and a cultural relevanc. david margolick is working on book about sid caesar and shows to the published by random house. please give a warm welcome to david margolick. [applause]

>> thanks very much for that nice production and thanks 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 it's reminding me already of the world that i enjoyed when a wrote my book about "strange fruit" and i feel as though i'm back in that world again today for the first time in a long time. it's conjuring up lots of happy memories for me. it was an accidental book. i waswa always intrigued with it but i remember seeing it on an album jacket it's just one of these things that these things this is to these things that would list of few of the songs in the album and i thought i didn't know what strange was and

i had no idea what it meant to and where it came from and what the referred to so probably like a lot of people i was blown away wheno i first heard the song. the one had really prepared me for it. so it's great to be thinking about all of these things again on this occasion. when paule, offered me a chanceo participate in this and immediately wondered how to get back into a topic i wrote about so long ago, 25 years ago. my mind fashioned on a tiny i advertisement in an old magazine. that magazine was "the new yorker" and the ad was one of those many rectangles that used to be stacked at the back of the magazine mostly for wedding bands and hats.

and ran in march of 1939 and it read heavy herds strange fruit growing onn southern trees sung by billie holliday a café society? i first sawi this ad at the lincoln center library in a scrapbook of her publicist for café society the hip nightclub on sheridan square that billed itself famously is the wrong place for the right people. it was to add. first it didn't get the name of the song right and then it mangled the lyrics themselves. strange fruit growing on southern trees. but that aside i found the notice extraordinary. it was something i never had seen before an advertisement for a song not for billie holliday

who was already a popular young performer at the peak of her powers were for her repertoire but for a single song she was singing, ag song evidently unusual enough in and of itself to go down in greenwich village to hear. for me it offered corroboration reassuring corroboration that had been elusive up to that point with the premise of my project to this "strange fruit" was unique in event in another itself. why so elusive? because there was so little out there about it. churn that. >> she's to finish. digital age it was hard to find anything from far back. "strange fruit" is in database is now it will come up with more. surprisingly little it. fallen between the cracks. there was almost nothing in the

mainstream press about it but the "new york times" for instance which is everybody's go to paper for anything historically had covered something so pointed angry and disruptive and left of center a song written by communist and sung by a gang opinionated. the daily news and the hurst papers were too right-wing. even the more liberal press of the day and in that day in the dark that meant simply as incredibly as it seems now "the new york post" treaded lightly. there was even less amazingly in the black press which was conservative and culturally cautious. as much as it covered it was more comfortable culturally with duke ellington and ella fitzgerald then with billie holliday. none of the leading black weekly

at the pittsburgh courier in and the "chicago defender" devoted stories to strange fruit. few references in them and it in these papers were passing an and like the amsterdam news calling it a swell piece of propaganda. there is nothing in the news reels of course they played in the among other places in the south.di and it even had the radio broadcast of that era that had been preserved. there would have been little on the song in them. stations were playing many records in those days. much of the music on the air was performed live and even in the new york plate popular up the cheery stuff. quote to the annie w. has been trying to get up the courage to allow billie holliday singing a café society to render the antilynching song strange

growing on the trees down south but they couldn't get it right either. to render the antilynching song strange growing on the trees down south on one of the nightspots regular broadcast the post reported in november 1939 station turned thumbs down a week ago. prove the number from last night's airing. bennett said no again but has agreed to let billie sing it at 1:00. billie did sing it at 1:00 that night but there's no record of it. have you heardru strange growing on southern trees sung by billie york as thenew short answer even among new yorker readers almost always would have been no. but that publicist knew what he was doing but the new yorker's readers archly middle to upper

class well-educated sophisticated politically progressive restrains -- "strange fruit"'s there's a picture of holliday from there. everyone is well dressed the women have and the men college boys it seemed that jackets and ties and all of them. no such ads for "strange fruit" ran in the amsterdam news. the great historian of jazz albert murray put it best and most bluntly. "strange fruit" was something the most lax didn't need or want to hear. they knew about it already. "strange fruit" had a bigger moral and sentimental impact among liberals mainly northern liberals and do-gooders that among northern or southern you

don't celebrate new year's over champagne with "strange fruit." don't get next to someone playing "strange fruit." who wants to hear something that reminds them of a? in his world it was sentimental. for those who got to hear billie holliday sync "strange fruit" it was certainly an abandoned as decree by barney joseph said the man who ran the place was also original. billie would conclude oliver knightley sets with and she prepared to sing at all service top waders cashiers busboys all stood still. the room went completely dark save for 10 spot on holliday's base.

when she came back up she was gone no matter how thunderous the applause she was never to return for a. my instruction was to walk off period josephson recalled. people had remember "strange fruit" can get burned by it. it was a dutifully rendered thing like a great dramatic moment and theater when the people in the audience one night the cartoonist al hirschfeld remembered. i don't think he giroud billie holliday singing "strange fruit" but she was painting your own picture and it didn't need to be elaborated. she said it all and i'm amazed at every time i hear this song i hear something new in it. i'm grateful to paul for playing it because i never noticed before that it gets louder as it

goes along. it gets louder and more intense and more fears as she goes along. of course things are rarely so neat. the old cbs sports reporter haywood hailed who some may remember for his sports it's told me the café society when billie holliday was quite short-lived. after we ate food and in our liberal way that band would hit a sharp word and go into them bear i's for the setting was the problem. even that light nightclub it was still a nightclub. i wondered then whether it made sense to sing such a song in such a mill you one of his classmates said. it belonged in a concert setting without whiskey andt cigarettes.

on april 201939 holliday back by eight musicians made the first recording of "strange fruit" overseeing the session was the aforementioned bill gates of commodore records and billy crystal's uncle. as ava gave holiday $400 for the four songs recorded that day and a thousand dollars later on. how much he eventually earned from a song he couldn't say. he used to give her cash especially when she was in trouble right out at the cash register in the store he said. he never kept a record of it. that recording the one that we just heard differs dramatically from the several versions that ensued over the course of billie

holliday's career and most notably in the film from 1956 surely before holliday that which is the most familiar version for those later iteration state volumes about holliday and the life she went on to live. but just how radical the song and the singer originally had been. that day in the studio billie all of 24 years old was and there's no weeping or histrionics. she was languorous. unflinching youthful yet worldly. out references to southern gallantry and was noted for the way she said sweet and fresh, fresh. she radiated contempt rather than anger.

no longer than would you have to go to sheraton square to hear "strange fruit." now there was a record. this is about a phonograph record which was successful for two days. samuel repton at "the new york post" wrote in october 1939 is called "strange fruit" and it will even after the 10th hearing make you blink and hold on to your chair. even now as i think of it the short hair on the back of my neck tightened and i want to hit somebody. and i think i know who. it was grafton went on a fantastically perfect piece of art, one which reversed the usual relationship between a black entertainment and a audience. i am entertaining you she used to say and now you just listen toe. me. the polite convention and this

is grafton speaking up polite convention between races gone. the anger be exploited ever mount high enough has its. if "strange fruit" wasn't music to dance by nor was it music tor march 2. even build gaber conceded it was a. at d least initially its appeal was more limited and rare if i'd put the people who bought the record for are the same folks who read w.e.b. dubois and the crisis listened to dominic singers march 4 ines some cases for loyalist and they were proportionally jewish and meeropol and we already heard from and josephson.

strange was another black jewish collaboration of your which by definition wasn't part of the mainstream. it's called status makes it fanciful to federal or chronic agents whoec not only listen to. hounded holiday for it. as lewis porter refuted recently there's an article in jazz times that claim is no truer than the suggestion that in the film lady sings the blues that holiday wrote "strange fruit" herself after happening upon a lynching while touring in the south. michael meeropol and worked in his last church or my people was he that had written it and when you go through the clippings and the bios you see many letters to the editor that he was forever

writing think this is mine. i didi it. holliday sing at those selective about where limiting to new york in big progressive nightclubs concert halls and black theaters demanding attention docking off sometimes and she didn't get thatat attention. i don't do it for people who might understand and appreciate it she told a daily the chicago disc jockey who sneaked the song onto his plate with sometimes. say one a local cop beat a black kid for running a red light. this is not a june moon crooned tune she explained. even in these friendly venues the occasional stumbled in and there would be trouble. she would give command performances of the song to special friends like studs terkel, serenading him at the

party marking his departure from world war ii. when. spoke to me about "strange fruit" he had toh reach about -- back two centuries to the song of the hurdy-gurdy man cranking his instrument with frozen fingers to find another song so devastating. holiday performed "strange fruit" on the european tour in 1954 and that may have inspired someone over there in france to translate the song into trent to french but that's as far as it ever got to pill with all the troubles the french are currently having with people in indochina and north i do not think it will be possible to get a major recording of the song publisher meeropol so even over there cause trouble.

not everyone loves "strange fruit." not all liberals love supports sprint john hammond called it the worst thing that ever happened to holliday made her the darling of left-wing. with evertz it -- with every defeat she separate and whatever abuse she incurred or inflicted on herself it was autobiographical -- autobiographical. when it seemed to take too much of her it was less call foran it anyway for performance began to taper off. i've been in forever forward everyone from nina simone to diana ross to khe sanh for wilson to audra mcdonnell you be to 40 singing it radiated through the culture touching a rousingro and inspiring a broadr

and diverse audience than it did when it first appeared but that's presumably why after dismissing it as quote a prime piece of propaganda for the naacp "time" magazine crowned at the song of the century. since holliday introduced it our capacity to be shocked has shrunk. a nullity itself has grown more novel. always there will be this unique and uncanny song, the song was also an event. the question is no longer have you heard "strange fruit" that has "strange fruit" never happened since and will should or could a "strange fruit" never happen again? thank you. [applause]

speaker will be margot severson a graduate of the school of journalism associate editor professor of journalism and why university before joining the staff of "the new york times." there she wrote about oaks and culture. for her firstr book review and other cultural criticism she won the pulitzer price committee she was awarded the pulitzer prize for criticism in 1995 per jeffersons after on michael jackson is what was to book critics circle award for autobiography and short listed for the prize for nonfiction but her work appears regulate in your publications at the harvard bogut the nation and the guardian.

she teaches riding at the columbiain giffords a project project brings has long had an jz and jasmine appeared in ken burn's ten-part acumen tree film entitled jazz. please welcome margot severson. [applause] and i thank you very much. i'm very proud to be here. i am going to focus in part on

it its historical its place in the evolving history of jazz which the term itself always debated. so, just a little cultural placement a little of repeating. from the less popular song collaboration of jewish and black artists and progressives to week of the word and radical leftists. the idea that it made its way from. the communist party magazine would not publish it. okay they wouldn't put teachers union it made its way from the

teachers union on the left to barney josephson who is a leftist nightclub owner to popular music which in its own way as theri nominal. american music does many things wonderfully but it's that space we often call nightclub music for tin pan alley or in musical theater that really tends to specializeze in its most serious subject that tends to the love and romance. just in that way alone i was trying toth think of a predecesr and i will happily take other examples not from folk music. they must somehow or another make money while remaking art and all i could think of was

brother can you spare a dime from 1932.st the lyricist was also a leftist. i don't know if he was. we know not. it was a secret in the annals and the big difference, who knows the song brother can you spare a dime? you know it's gripping, it's dramatic and it's also a plea. there is mournful mistes they ae and it was also being as it was raised on the demonstrators and the veteran's at the white house who wanted their bonus and during the depression the government turned its troops against them but it would have been assumed they were almost

entirely. and a black veteran may -- he may haveer joined it may been arrested but in any case the difference between a dramatic plea that ask you to empathize and to. and to bring genera city and change it heart and maybe sing felt. this as david said is enhancing "strange fruit" and it's an initiation ritual. it's a poem but it also has something in common with the documentary. it could in some way be a film and that sets up, well it was framed very cleverly theatrically and i think even

morally well-planned as a song that had to be performed in silence and whose singer and whose witness close her eyes. when david was talking a thought to myself the singer on stage and the discordance must be so acute that sometimes closing her eyes was an emotional release and catching yourself fromm the audience but then at the end of it she disappears. i think there's something, i

don't want to say unsavory but thatha relationship that strange cohabitation between political testimony declaration and entertainment. this is something we very much struggle with today in our relationship to art and politics and how they collaborate. it seems to me in that way to look at struggles and look at someone like bob dylan. first is very serious and no s. not all i do and i do other things. margot just leave that alone. [laughter] but i was talking to an artist just the other day about even a

kind of experimental jazz musician like monk was. you put it on the cover of "time" magazine and what is the relationship between the seriousness of your music in your popularity. sody holliday is already already navigating that. "the new york post" quotes suddenly she said you listen to me for a wild. as and this is huge but it's also very much gendered. this is a black line who is described by who was at time she's so woman. "time" magazine. these werere the days when you could be a woman particularly a

even if she was gifted just that way but i forget which magazine ran an item when ella fitzgerald got stuck in an elevator shaft and had to be helped out. the disrespect of this art and entertainment that we very much enjoy has also been mocked. the other thing and one of the things that's going on with this song once it moves into becoming the best-selling record is jazz is being taken seriously by some critics but in general and among serious music writers bears

confining in defining of jazz an' big band era as entertainment. it's in trends in glee linked -- intrinsically linked and it has no ability to express certain kindsco of subtle and complicatd emotions. i think a song like this very much just slices that down. it's like the notion that still going that many black singers don't have the diction to deliver, the same discipline to deliver this kind of work both in terms of its content and in terms of its form. that languorous salty voice of

holliday but how many expected it was somberly served as an anthem and kind of a call, a call to arms. i think these recordings made a huge difference in terms of how one internalizes a song. it was sung in a nightclub. you are going to talk to the person and maybe it's the jacket you are wearing. if you're listening and say in all black theater or a theater

full of and hopefully some other you know you are there to internalize it and take it in and to walk away thinking about it. my parents both chicagoans did not go to café. society. certainly my mother bought the records and by the time i came along as a child of the 50s it was a sanctioned sacred object if you will a black music, a jazz and if holliday and her particular gift.

let me go back to my point about female anger. as you said her father was angry and he wrote and i wrote this down i lynching and i the people who do it. that's what billie was representing very controlled an incredibly intensese and focuse. there is bessie smith and love fearless love is why sing the song of. for a woman in the world of

popular music to be so contained meaning in control of her anger and yet using it as a weapon, as a call to an awakening. this is unusual. her other piers whom i love, i love ella fitzgerald but it wasn't done by anybody else and it wasn'tne being done. albert were -- albert murray's words may clear ellington would start writing a different kind of race conscious of set-aside singup and uplifting but he wast

doing it yet. you hadn't written black and beige yet. she was in the vanguard. let s me point out some of the musicians who came after a course simone hadbu been mentiod but is a radicalism comes after. it comes sometime after me point out. i would say the bop musicians in their own way were instrumental. who is she helping to set the bar in terms of jazz and politically -- politically where i could call and aesthetic. i'm thinking of the 50s. it made me think of that.

sonny rollins max roach and abby lincoln and of course nina simone so not in that first 1959 album. that doesn't happen until later. so that's remarkable and go a little further and think of the difficulties of josh and -- jazz negotiating itself and god bless them thinking ahead to the 70s 80s and the 90s and the movement in new york and the kabc and musicians in chicago. so all of these connections and all of these locations and this locating of the proper setting

the proper setting for this song and what audience it reaches. all of those are going to be taken upup in one could perhaps and perhaps i'm being a little frivolous but just to show how daring she was miles davis a descendent of billie holliday singing about it. i think in certain ways david's discussion of the cultural and social complications of its audience and its place as this rarified object but it's also a

political stimulant. you know i kept saying they pay won't say this but i think i will. for example these accounts of abolitionist material and early novels in the turn of the 19th century to the 20th and what sometimes comes up is a question that he can come up from the opponent of abolition but a questioning of what the sexual feelings and these abuses of might be stirring out. i think it's crudely put usually the assaults the attacks and the implications are that there is no way around certainly when you're talking about an

attractive black performer and certainly talking about a woman, the question of how a work like this can get eroticized. one could argue and i'm not criticizing it and café society but one could argue almost anything presented in a certain kind of somewhat glamorous setting gets eroticized. the question is how is that used in terms of the songs purpose and its intent and does it patronize, does it open up ways to think about all of the feelings to err is in to what

goes in our political air. .. 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 often shameful and embarrassing to people. it is worth thinking about. it's very interesting is on the other side to ask everybody questions. thank you. [applause]

will take a couple of questions from the audience. while we are getting settled, why don't we think about when called by time magazine. orcs always behind. [laughter] particularly after it's insulting to belly when they described song in 1939. >> 1999. yes, 60 years later. i'm glad they caught up eventually. so do people questions in the audience? hugsf hello, i enjoyed all thre

of the very excellent presentations. i was shocked to hear from you that the black community in the late 30s and 40s did not embrace or consume turned fate some black stood consume it. works okay that's why i mentioned. my mother and her friends fared by the time it was a given. she was also buying up at the distinction he iski making is fr those early years. he's not wrong at all. newspapers could be conservatives but there were conservatives and black communities as well. i'm sure my parents and then moved to the generally liberal.

quick is their disagreement about the black community and the consumption of this fallen strange fruit? i am hearing two things today. i'm thinking about my parents forxa example. my parents washed on washington. my grandmother's board in 1903. they were all very angry and very political. but i don't know from my childhood and being with them and listening to their music. i was first aware of strange feud in and 60s. maybe it what wee are hearing is two different sizes of audience in the late 30s early 40s large numbers of black are not buying these records. going to listen to it or writing about it in newspapers. but, as the decade moved on she

found anakin david mentioned the black theaters that she performed and as the decade went on and moved into the 50s found more andla more of black listeners and fans. quick to point you are making is early on a liberal white audience. wouldn't you agree? you go through the black papers of that era there is virtually nothing there. guarantee a dozen of them. exclusively in writing stories about it. there's almost more coverage her fine and mellow in there or from strange fruit. >> i point out in my book the three main jewish liberals and

lefties.ly billy knew exactly she was very much aware in an interview in the mid 40s with pm magazine she said she herself is a communist. text john hammond was always busy. as franky newton wasn't it? for frankywh newton was a leftit as well. franky newton was on that recording. >> yes he was. my question relates to the first part of this discussion great roosevelt i really want to know

was invited to the white house? >> yes she was. what were those circumstances why strange fruit and the movement of blacks would probably affect franklin roosevelt. >> she did attend the white house when roosevelt was in the white house. she attend with hazel scott the favorite pianist. i'm probably a best friend one of her best friends. was it a fundraiser for the infantile paralysis run into him in the basement when he was in his wheelchair and they had a conversation. but yes she was invited to the whitee house. and hazel scott went with her. what daringly progressive as his wife eleanor we know that progress eleanor was much more liberal. >> after this of brilliant

dissectionhe of the song wouldnt be appropriate to close this session with another hearing of the original performance? >> we could. i'm sorry? yes will go to question over here first. over here? cracked i am just curious when the new yorker had that add comments of the c ad was to get people to go to society it was an ad for the song. what was the gist of the new yorker add? >> i read the whole thing that isle it. a little tiny ad and apart from the phone number chelsea something rather and the address sheraton square that with the entire ad. it's a tiny reminder was see this song at café society.

it was not yet a record when she started to sing. >> billie holiday led us to believe she was the writer. >> still in the current version if we go by the autobiography it's still in there, it's not true. [laughter] that's my question if at any point she acknowledged. >> she loved the song. she was very possessive of it. so what she would say later on it was a song written especially for me which is also not true. more questions?

like billy joel. does anyone know where she was born, where she died? when she died how she died? >> yes to me too cover that i just did it. billy thought she was born in baltimore family told her she was born w in baltimore. she did not find out she was in philadelphia until 1954 when she got her passport to do her 54 european tour. got thought she was born in philadelphia but who knows. she continued to tell everyone she was born in baltimore even after she knew she was born in philadelphia. even though she was born in philadelphia, her mother brought her to baltimore when she was like a few days old. she was actually raised in baltimore until she was like 12 -ish. then she moved to new york for

for harlem, then to queens, then back to harlem. oh, the death. she died in july of 1959 on the 17th. she had become ill about six weeks beforehand and they had hospitalized her metropolitan hospital up in harlan. there ensued which i covered in great detail in my book about drama because she said when she got in there they're going to rest me on my deathbed, and sure enough they did. in my opinion they planted heroin in her room and she was arrested for narcoticsss possession. she was fingerprinted, mug shot, the whole thing. the last two or three weeks of her life was taken up, they were trying to, they wanted to appear

before grandbe jury probe she ws bedridden she literally could not get out of bed and they wanted her to appear before the jury. did a great job in blocking a lot of the attempts because a city government was trying to do it.ha newt york's behavior was shamel at that time. the police department, the mayor's office, she eventually died of cirrhosis of the river liver. that triggered her heart attack. but i would say the way she was harassed at the end of her life, had a significant effect on her. it's almost as if she gave up the will tog live. that will be the last question. >> owes naacp case on the sun sondid they accept it? rejected? what you know, i do not remember any reaction from the naacp.

i think that instinctively they probably would've steered clear of it. and it would've been too left for them. margaret do you know? >> i do not know but i agree with that. they were notis the leftist cultural vanguard. >> they're not progressive at the time. >> the song itself was taken by the antilynching movement. it was delivered to every member of congress. david, you might know the year it happened. do not remember the year they were trying to consider an anti- lynching bill. >> they have been trying. >> joe biden signed it. more than anyone else was is responsible for integrating stuyvesant town. it was another form you communist and un- regenerated, communist.

just writtenrg out of naacp and thurgood marshall got him nowhere close to the end of the naacp they did not want to be saddled with anything smacking of communism. >> that's right, that is true. kirk's first i want to thank our panelists for today. [applause] [applause] and i think our suggestion from the audience is a good one. let's end with the billy singing strange fruit once again. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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history to be sent for a newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive weekly highlights of upcoming programs like lectures in history, american artifacts, the presidency and more. sign up for the hht beat newsletter today sent be sure to watch american history tv every weekend or anytime online at c-span.org/history. >> here's a portion of a recent program on american history tv. >> they're going to move these final days of the trial outside. so you have this spectacle but on the stage they had built outside that preparation this is not when the trial is going to move it. instead of a crowd of thousands, you're going to have this a moment for the great agnostic is going to have on the stand to testify about the bible. >> seeds from this moment.

at the courthouse that said read your bible and said take that down or put up a second one that says richard darwin. europe is amazed by the case. but in this, headlines from around the country sitting in downside is simply him trying to protect the word of god gets the greatest atheist or agnostic in the state. out the papers to know i'm not afraid to get on the stand with him and let him do his worst. i want the world to know to a round of applause than dural girls him on what an absolute literal interpretation of the bible would mean. do you really believe that until

the tower of babel every human being spoke the same language? do you believe it jonah could've been swallowed by a big fish, and look for three days and the fishes stomach? should joshua make the sun stand still? it's believed the sun rotated from the earth. does the sun revolved around the earth? did he really believe a great flood destroyed all living things except those on the ark. response is yes. god created the laws of science. and he can change them when he wants too. so miracles are moments where god change the laws of science get over it. there's these famous exchanges and this is one where they are the estimate the earth began in 4004 bc.

i don't know if that's accurate in his defense it's too far different but then there is the discussion how he reaches reachs calculation to this exchange. what do you think the bible says? don't you know around that brent, i never made a calculation. a calculation from what? brian, i could not say. darrell, from the generations of man? made the calculations. i would not want to say that. i do not think about things i don't think about. darrell, do you think about them? brian sometimes. and in this a grilling, depending upon who is listening and who is the accounts have very different takeaways. in the urban world darrell made

brian look like a buffoon. but the people who love him and like the antievolution law, brian firmly defended the faith. there is a key moment however where brian admits there are some things in the bible that don't have to be taken literally. some are small. some of the bible is given. for instance ye are the salt of the earth. i would not insist man is actually salt that's used in the salt of saving god's people. this six days and bible creation could be a larger period of time in 24 hours. but periods of time lasting many years.

that opens a door for religious modernism but there will be some people who criticize from the fundamental point of view on this point. but nonetheless that depends on the position. it's kind of the turning point in this grilling. >> you can watch the full program all of our history programs anytime online@c-span.org/history. follow american history tv on facebook, x, youtube for schedule updates. to learn about what happened learn more about the people and events that shaped the american story. client says he's been history. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪