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Billie Holiday- "Strange Fruit" (1939)
Jazz singer Billie Holiday's 1939 song "Strange Fruit" was one of the most famous and powerful protest songs in the history of America. The song, which expressed the horror of the lynchings of blacks in the country by using the extended metaphor of fruit growing from the trees, i.e. "Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root." Although the song preceded the civil rights movement by many years, it had a major influence on numerous artists who chose to express their indifference to prejudice and racism on record during the civil rights era.
(Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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