Lynching lyrics drive song documentary

By Lynn Elber
Associated Press

•	'Strange Fruit' 10 tonight, KHET (repeats at midnight)

Now Abel Meeropol gets his due in a documentary that, while acknowledging the man and his achievement, is mindful of Holiday's contribution.

"Strange Fruit," airing tonight as part of PBS' "Independent Lens" series, also seeks to fit the song into the sometimes uneasy cultural and political alliance of black and Jewish America.

Joel Katz's film touches as well on Meeropol's link to another part of 20th-century American history: He and wife Anne adopted the sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg after the couple were executed in 1953 for espionage. "My father was most proud of 'Strange Fruit,' of all the things he ever did. He was most proud of that," one of the boys says in the film.

It is the song and its horrific images of hatred, contained in just a dozen lines, that drive the hourlong documentary:

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees"

The evocative images were set into a melody that resonates with the somberness of a dirge and the grace of a spiritual.

Although Holiday claimed the song was written for her and that she participated in its creation, that was not the case. But she brought the politically charged song to public attention, at some risk to her then-budding career.