Women's History Month: Billie Holiday keeps tapping on my shoulder

Playing Taps close to Billie's grave

About 5 years ago I played a church service dedication in the Bronx outside at St. Raymond's Cemetery where at the end I was to play taps for Memorial Day.  This is something I do on a semi regular basis, so it didn't draw any attention other than feeling something was special here as the cemetery was quite large.  Before I played taps someone told me, "you know...Billie Holliday is buried out there somewhere close."  I was taken back and decided my taps, although meant for military service was for Billie in my heart.  After I was given a general vicinity to find Billie.  It took me about 15 minutes in the hot sun, but it was worth it.  I was alone, so I cried.  I took a few pictures of how people consistently visit her grave and leave remembrances.  I really knew nothing about "Strange Fruit", but I knew her tragic life.  Little did I know 5 years later I would be drawn back into Billie's life.

Serendipity indeed!  Many may know the haunting song made famous by Billie Holliday.  What you may not know about the songs history and historical connections is fascinating.  A story that should be a part of every learning institutions focus on slave history.  You will have a captive audience if you entwine this connection through many lens of time and genres; music, poverty, prostitution, self-esteem, race, etc.

DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx is famous around New York with such graduates as James Baldwin and his collaborator Richard Avedon, Burt Lancaster, Stan Lee, Jerry Moss (co founder A&M records), Richard Rodgers, and many actors, artists, etc.  Who you don't know is Abel Meeropool.  Who??? Abe was a graduate of DeWitt Clinton in 1921, and later a teacher of English there where James Baldwin was one of his students.  He is also the composer of "Strange Fruit".

Connecting the dots is fabulously fun and it's what I do! Abel Meeropool, after seeing a picture of a prominent lynching, wrote a poem, "Bitter Fruit", that he later put to music.  How did it get to Billie Holliday?  There was a social club in Manhattan, the only bi-racial one, where Meeropool played his song for the club owner.  The club had opened in 1939 and the song presented in that same year.  Holliday was performing there and was asked to sing it at the end of her set, in complete darkness, without anyone being served, per the owners decision.  It made Billie uncomfortable.  Which is another story.  Your imagination of having to do this at that time should fill you in about her reticence.

Serendipity doesn't end there.  W.E.B. Dubois was giving a party at his home in Manhattan where Abe Meeropool and his wife attended.  Without a deep history lesson into the McCarthy era, there was a socialist/Communist movement about in New York, and the famous people involved is another tremendous story.  Meeropool was brought before a committee investigating Communism in the public schools because they wanted to know if the American Communist Party had hired him to write "Strange Fruit".  At this time the American Communist Party was very involved with civil rights.

The later infamous couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were also at this party at Dubois' where they met the Meeropools.  The famous trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. on being Russian spies, led to their execution.  Family members of the Rosenberg's were reticent to take in their two sons.  So, despite what it might mean for Meeropools career, he used the alias "Lewis Allan", they adopted the Rosenberg's sons.

There have been articles written about the song and Billy Holliday, see below, but I haven't found anyone writing about the strong connection to the movement and DeWitt Clinton High School with it's long list of graduates.

 the-man-behind-strange-fruit

There is always more to the story if we just look deeper and reveal the serendipitous connections that connect us all to a more human world possibility.

The Civil War was about Race

Section of the Cornerstone speech, by Alexander Stephens VP of the Confederacy, that gets to the heart of why racism then and today is the “cornerstone” of our divide.  This speech was delivered at the Savannah Atheneum weeks before the first shots started the Civil War.  Remember Stephens was elected governor of Georgia years after the Civil War, AND did not support session from the Union.  He told the truth about the motives.  This is why you hear nothing about him.

You cannot celebrate your southern pride, your Dixie flag, without knowing what part racism played and still plays in that history. The words are there for posterity and no one can deny what the confederacy was all about.

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.” 

There is no argument.

Harriet Tubman with rescued slaves.