Feel/Think/Act
Strange Fruit
MLK Day, January 19, 2026
Difficult to fully absorb Billie Holiday’s courage in recording and performing Strange Fruit in her day (starting in 1939); a song written by a Jewish man.
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
The point of remembering troubled history is not, as some object, to make us feel bad. The point of remembering troubled history is to honor those who suffered, to better apprehend the deep worth of every human, and to hope that we are never again so lost and degraded by our own moral confusion, inaction, or worse, hate.
And just perhaps, from there, to take the part of those who suffer injustice, especially if for who they are.