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.
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