Abel Meeropol

Many songs throughout history have tried to help correct wrongdoings or educate the world about those wrongdoings. An example song really hits me hard is “Strange Fruit” most notably song by Billie Holiday. The story behind the song starts in Indiana in 1930. Three black men were in the county jail and awaiting trial for the death of a white man and supposed rape of his girlfriend. A mob gathered outside of the jail. The mob tried to get into the prison using sledgehammers. Eventually, the mob…

quote can be disproven with many different songs and articles. Some being “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol and A Prom Divided, written by Sara Corbett. Another source of incredible interest is The Scottsboro Case found at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow.stories_events_scotts.html . These different sources all support my argument that racism was and still is very prominent. The song Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol states very graphically what the racist south used to do to African-Americans. The…

Does African-American Literature Exist? African-American literature can be described in many different ways. According to Gibson, African-American literature should: empower the black community, convey the writer’s thoughts and meaning, and may or may not contain a political message (Gibson). However, in Warren’s piece, “Does African-American Literature Exist?” Warren questions whether there can be any new pieces of African-American Literature. Warren describes African-American literature as…

Pastoral scene of the gallant south The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. (Abel Meeropol 1903-1986) In The Strange Fruit, Abel Meeropol graphically describes bodies hanging like festering fruit on trees. He strips away the veneer of the beautiful South to expose the horrors that black people suffered. This poem chills me and frustrates me, since racist murderers walked free just because others turned a…

During WWII, the Soviets were allies with the Allied powers. However, after the war ended, democratic countries were in a cold war against Soviet-run Communist nations that clearly wanted to spread communism throughout Eastern Europe. Many occurrences had Americans concerned about the expansion of communism, from the blockade of West Berlin by the Soviets in 1948, to Mao Zedong’s taking over of China in October 1948. Even though Americans were afraid of the spread of communism, they assumed that…

The Civil Rights Movement: How it Changed Jazz “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees. “Strange Fruit” initially performed by Billie Holiday depicts one of the initial repercussions of the Civil Rights movement‒ a lynching. Holiday’s expression of the event delivers an overall timbre and mood for jazz in the coming era. The development of the Civil Rights movement…

Jazz music is a staple of the Civil Rights movement, signifying the long struggle and the long-awaited freedom of African-American people in the United States. Jazz musicians, such as Nina Simone and Billie Holiday, worked tirelessly to get their messages across in order to further the Civil Rights movement. While all art forms seem to come with a sense of irony, it appears that jazz is the most prone, due to the ever-lingering racism of the United States, the self-proclaimed superiority of…

Pete Seeger was born on May 3, 1919 in Patterson, NY. Having been raised in a musical family, Seeger picked up a love for music throughout his childhood years. He later became one of the most well known American folk singers. Seeger spent the first years of his career collaborating with singer-songwriter, Woody Guthrie. Both artists, Seeger and Guthrie, shared similar point of views, in that they were both social activists. In 1948, Seeger continued his music with an American folk quartet called…

Racism was always mixed with jazz. But it just “created tension and strengthened” around the community at times but that changed in the 1930s. In the 1930s the Great Depression hit America which made a big impact in the economy and affected every part of America. Jazz music was mostly affected by the depression, people began staying “home and listening to the radio, instead of spending their money and going to nightclubs” (History of Jazz). In effort to save the jazz music and its popularity,…

Music has been used as a form of protest for centuries. Protest music is a media made to bring attention to social and political issues and call for changes to fix them. This is a phenomenon seen throughout American history and is still seen in today’s day and age. The diversity within the category of protest music is mind blowing, with many of the pieces under its classification coming from a plethora of different genres. Many of the pieces included in the category are also from multiple eras…