Today’s #StrangeFruitMOTD reports on the premiere of a new film, “Deborah Jane, the screenwriter and Executive Producer of 'Strange Fruit: The Hip-Hopera,' is the first Black woman filmmaker to ever produce a cinematic Hip-Hop-musical. Her groundbreaking film recently celebrated its Red Carpet Gala and Film Premiere held at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, California. The event was a unique milestone, not merely a single evening of celebration, but the start of a series of vibrant gatherings aimed at promoting global racial reconciliation.

Today's Strange Fruit Mention of the Day: Protest songs in honor of Black Music Month (in June), featuring Joe Hinton and Billie Holiday.

"In 1939, singer Billie Holiday recorded a song called 'Strange Fruit' – a song composed by Jewish American Abel Meeropol (under the pseudonym Lewis Allan). The story goes that the lyrics were taken from a poem Meeropol wrote which was published in 1937. The protest song depicts the lynching of Black Americans hanging on trees like fruit. It makes you wonder why it took until 2022 to pass the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Law."

Today’s Strange Fruit Mention of the Day: “Brooklyn-based photographer Jon Henry has spent the last nine years in the making of his project ‘Stranger Fruit,’ a book with photos of Black mothers from every state in the country, who worry about the safety of their sons in the hands of the police.

Today’s #StrangeFruitMOTD comes courtesy of an update of the classic song entitled, "Estranged Fruit” from Fishbone featuring NOFX. According to a press release, "'Estranged Fruit' is Fat Mike’s update on one of the greatest compositions in this country’s songbook, ​​Abel Meeropol and Billie Holiday’s 1939 'Strange Fruit.'" Learn more and listen to "Estranged Fruit" at https://consequence.net/2023/05/fishbone-nofx-estranged-fruit-stream/

Today's Strange Fruit Mention of the Day comes from Cassie Williams’ powerful “poem and essay on black motherhood—and life, ‘Even Breathing Is Strange: Reflections on the 3rd Anniversary of George Floyd’s Murder:’

Earlier this month on April 20th marked the anniversary of Billie Holiday recording "Strange Fruit" in 1939. The song was originally written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish activist, poet, and high school English teacher, in protest against the lynchings of Black Americans. (Abel and his wife Anne later adopted the Rosenbergs' two young sons after Ethel and Julius' executions.)

Happy birthday to activist artist Billie Holiday, born #OnThisDay in 1915. She is perhaps best known for her performances of Abel Meeropol's powerful anti-lynching song, "Strange Fruit."

Today's Strange Fruit Mention of the Day comes to us from Torri Williams, a Coalition Leader of the Marion Community Remembrance Project. The city of Marion in Indiana served as the inspiration for Abel Meeropol's anti-lynching song, "Strange Fruit," when he came across a gruesome photo of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abe Smith which took place there.

Torri shared with us the winning entry of a recent Racial Justice Art Contest, a sculpture entitled "Strange Fruit," created by 17-year-old student artist, Claudia McGinness.

Happy birthday to activist artist, feminist and civil rights icon Nina Simone, who would have turned 90 today.

In 1965 Simone recorded her own harrowing rendition of "Strange Fruit," the powerful anti-lynching song penned by Abel Meeropol and made famous by Billie Holiday.

Simone once called it "about the ugliest song I have ever heard. Ugly in the sense that it is violent and tears at the guts of what white people have done to my people in this country.'”

On this day (February 14, 1910) Abel Meeropol was born. He was a teacher and a poet, most famous for writing the anti-lynching poem, "Bitter Fruit," which he would later adapt to music and retitle as the song, "Strange Fruit."

He once said, “I wrote ‘Strange Fruit’ because I hate lynching, and I hate injustice, and I hate the people who perpetrate it.”