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How is art a form of protest today? The story of Billie Holiday and "Strange Fruit"

  • Writer: Amy Lee Lillard
    Amy Lee Lillard
  • 2 minutes ago
  • 7 min read

Can art be a form of protest? Does art really work as resistance? And how can you make protest art?


In times like these, it's natural to wonder if art is really important. If writing, music, performance, and other creative work really matters.


I find hope and inspiration from looking at stories of artists using their work to resist the status quo. The story of Billie Holiday and "Strange Fruit" is powerful example to show the way.


Listen to this story!



There’s a certain type of video that will often draw me in. You’ve probably seen them on YouTube or TikTok: young people reacting to music from before they were born. To me it’s oddly soothing to get to watch someone in real time discover songs from my youth, like Rage Against the Machine, Beastie Boys, Riot Grrrl, and Rhythm Nation-era Janet Jackson. I knew all the moves from those videos, btw.


But the reaction videos to one particular song are almost painful to watch.


When the videos start, the reactors might think they’re hearing just another ancient jazz standard. But then they hear the words.


Some of these reactors start crying. Some sit in stunned silence after it’s done. Some look at the camera lens, and you see they’ll be haunted by that moment forever.


And that’s in 2026. Imagine crowds of white people who have come to a club in 1939 to see a phenom, an incredible new singer, for a night of entertainment. And then they hear this song.


How has one song stunned for nearly a century? How was it so powerful that the federal government targeted the singer for decades? And what can we learn from the story of “Strange Fruit” and Billie Holiday about how art is resistance?

 

"STRANGE FRUIT"

Now before we go further: just talking about the song won’t do. We have to hear it.


This is the audio from a performance in 1956, nearly 20 years after Billie Holiday first performance “Strange Fruit” in a club. At this point in her life, Billie is struggling in many ways, for reasons we’ll get to in a minute. First: the song.


 

PART 1: THE POEM

The story of this song starts in a very surprising place.


In the 1930s, Abel Meeropol was a Jewish teacher from the Bronx. He and his wife were communists, a not too shocking fact in the 30s. Later in the height of the Cold War, they took in the two sons of communists Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, after they were executed for supposed sedition.


Back in 1937, though, Abel saw a picture that showed two black teenagers, Thomas Shipp and Abraham Smith, hanging from a tree in Indiana. They were surrounded by a crowd of smiling, proud white people. Dressed for church.


These photos weren’t uncommon. In fact, in some places in the South and farther north, people would sell photographs of lynchings as postcards. 


Abel wrote a poem and called it Strange Fruit. It was published in a magazine. And that could have been that.

 

PART 2: LYNCHING

I don’t know about you, but as a white cisgender Gen X woman, it took me wayyyy too fucking long to learn about lynching.


And this idea and its history is just one of our historical realities that is being wiped away in museums, parks, and historical sites.


So here’s the painful truth. Long after the Civil War, long into the 1900s, long, longer than white America will admit, lynching was a tool to keep black people powerless and silent.


It could start for any reason. Or no reason. Let’s use a common example: a white man feels slighted, and claims  he sees a black man looking too long at his girlfriend. There’s no truth that will make a difference. A mob assembles, an arrest is made. And that man is tortured, mutilated, and burned, before or after being hung by a tree.

No due process. The police were often involved. And the community would gather, egging and celebrating the brutality. Taking a smiling black and white picture to mark the moment.


From 1882 to 1968, nearly 5000 people were reported lynched in the US, according to the NAACP. But they and many historians say this number is probably far less than what actually happened.


And it’s not over. In 1998, James Byrd was chained to a car by three white supremacists and dragged to his death in the streets of Jasper, Texas. In 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was fatally shot while jogging near Brunswick, Georgia. The three white men charged with killing Arbery claimed he was trespassing. People will cite “stand your ground” laws as a excuse for attacking and killing black and other people of color. You could make a case that police killings of young black men? A modern form of lynching.

 

PART 3: THE SONG

In 1939, Billie Holiday was a 23-year-old singer with a residency at Café Society, a club in New York that prided itself on being inclusive at a time when that wasn’t the case.


Soon after publishing his poem in 1937, Abel Meeropol had turned it into a song. He’d been singing his poem around the city at protest rallies and small venues. And the song came to Billie’s attention, with the request that she sing and record it.


And Billie hesitated. For good reason. More than anything, she was afraid of being targeted. A black woman singing about racism? Murder? The sins of white America?


Billie had been walking a very narrow path. She’d grown up poor in Baltimore. She’d been arrested for prostitution. She had been still a teenager and desperate for work when she first auditioned as a singer.


She gained fame for her unique voice and take on jazz standards.  Up to this point, Billie was known for jazz songs, love songs, blues songs. A bit of melancholy.


But then “Strange Fruit” came her way. And when you grow up poor, black, and woman, and then find some success, of course you’re going to hesitate before you take on a song like “Strange Fruit.”


Soon, though, she said yes.

 

PART 4: A TARGET

When Billie first performed the song at Café Society in 1939, the experience was just as striking. The waiters would stop serving. The lights would go black. A single spotlight on her face. She would sing once, without an encore, and when the lights came back up, she was gone.


Reactions? Living in today’s world, you can probably anticipate some of them. Utter shock. Sadness. Hyberbolical praise. Histrionic rebuke. Some peole walked out. Some people told every single person they knew to go see Billie sing “Strange Fruit.”


Billie recorded the song on an independent label that would risk the censure. Many radio stations blacklisted it, especially in the South. But as we all know: ban something, and you make it deeply intriguing. So the song eventually sold 1 million copies to become the best selling record of Holiday’s career.


And that kind of success makes racists and the powers that be really pissed off.


Harry Ainslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and an avowed racist who even used slurs in official memos, warned Billie to stop performing the song. When she didn’t, he assigned an undercover black officer to get close to her and document her drug abuse. Which led to her arrest.


In 1947 she was sentenced to a year in a West Virginia federal prison, where she was forced to go through heroin  withdrawal. She was banned from performing in NY.


Through the 1950s, Billie continued to perform where she could. But she also slipped back into heroin use, and had severe heart and lung problems and liver disease from drugs and alcohol.


In 1959, Billie collapsed and was hospitalized. She was given methadone, and started to recover. But Ainslinger, who had never given up his hatred of Billie, arrested her in the hospital, handcuffed her to a gurney, and cut off her methadone.


She died a few days later. 

 

PART 5: MISSISSIPPI GODDAM

In 1999, Time Magazine named “Strange Fruit” the song of the century.

By that point, we could see how the song had helped galvanize a movement. In fact, an anti-lynching bill campaigners used the song to try to convince congressmen to vote right.


Perhaps seeing the incredibly brave performances of Billie Holiday, walking on to a stage every night despite powerful people after her, many musicians have since covered the song. The most famous might be Nina Simone in 1965, a singer who expanded on Billie’s legacy with songs like “Mississippi Goddam.”



 

CONCLUSION:

And that’s one of the lasting legacies of “Strange Fruit.” Inspiring others to tell terrible truths.


Because the truth is still shocking. Those YouTubers seeing Strange Fruit for the first time are utterly shocked to hear a truthteller like Billie. And that’s before they realize how long ago she did it.


Billie Holiday was hesitant to take that weight on. She knew it would be a weight, and though she couldn’t have known the particulars of what the powers that be might do, she knew something awful could come her way.


But over the years, she gained a defiance when she sang the song. In that performance we listened to at the beginning in 1956, Billie is nearly two decades into government persecution, deep into a debilitating addiction, and surviving abuse from multiple corners of her life. She’s singing at a time that racism is killing more than ever. The audio came from a video performance that you can see in the link in the show notes, and you can see all that heaviness on her face.


But you can also see the determination. The fuck you to everyone that tried to tell her to stop. That’s resistance.


So what can we learn from this?


  • We go with our gut. The things that scare us, the things that others tell us not to do, might be the things that define us, and impact the world.

  • We tell the truth. The terrible, ugly truths of this world.

  • And we commit to making art as resistance for the long term. For a better world.

 

The Art of Resistance is a podcast from Rebel Yell Creative. To make art that matters, every creative person needs support. Find yours at RebelYellCreative.com.


This is Amy Lee Lillard, and I wrote, narrated, and produced this show. Check the show notes for all sources. And head to rebelyellcreative.com for full show transcripts, art, and more.


I’ll see you next time.  

 

 

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