The photograph helped inspire the poem and song "Strange Fruit" written by Abel Meeropol -- and performed around the world by Billie Holiday. The song's best known recordings and performances were by Billie Holiday and Josh White. I think that misses the truth. They are waiting patiently for the orphaned sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to arrive. [29] The group's rendition was selected by the Mojo magazine staff to be included on the compilation Music Is Love: 15 Tracks That Changed The World . It covers a range of contemporary themes: children separated from parents, the political persecution of dissidents, and social justice warriors doing battle against a racist, xenophobic, increasingly fascistic America. 3 The photograph so haunted Meeropol that he wrote a poem about it entitled "Bitter Fruit," published in 1937 in The New York Teacher, the journal of the teachers union. To be sure, rebuilding those links in the chain of memory and teasing out the secrets of the American left won’t be an easy task. For the rest of us, the saga of the songwriter and the sons of the murdered “spies” seems like a secret history, a potshard buried beneath the sand that speaks of a whole fallen civilization. It was also in this period that Abel Meeropol wrote the poem, “Beloved Comrade.” The poem, at eight lines, is even shorter and sparer than “Strange Fruit.” Addressing a dead friend (“To you, beloved comrade, we make this solemn vow / The fight will go on”), it comforts them in the knowledge that the struggle that they had fought and died for would continue until the final victory (“Sleep well, beloved comrade, our work will just begin / The fight will go on till we win”). As lefty public school teachers, the Meeropols were both heavily involved in the New York City Teachers Union. It was an attack on the perpetrators of lynching.”. He barely escaped blacklisting by changing jobs, moving around the country, and lying and obfuscating when interrogated by government agents. This material has been combed over in countless books and articles. DSA understands that. Perhaps you already know what the Du Bois’, the Meeropols, and the Rosenbergs all had in common. (1) Abel Meeropol, Strange Fruit (1939) Probably written for Spanish Civil War soldiers from the International Brigades, it was sung by Josh White for Franklin Roosevelt and by Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti (two Italian anarchists framed for murder and executed in 1927). Other reports say that Robert Gordon, who was directing Billie Holiday's show at Café Society, heard the song at Madison Square Garden and introduced it to her. But there was only so much protection a network of friends could provide each other. Transcript: James Baldwin’s ‘Little Houses’ and Abel Meeropol’s ‘Strange Fruit’ Paul Gilroy: My name is Paul Gilroy, I'm the Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the study of Racism and Racialisation at University College London. Like many artistic New York City lefties, the Meeropols joined the Communist Party in the 1930s. Anne Meeropol sang and played it on her nylon string guitar at Teachers’ … In the 1930s, the Communist Party USA swelled to about 80,000 members at the height of its popularity. The house belongs to Black socialist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Perhaps you’ve already guessed the secret behind this odd convergence of people. In the poem, Meeropol expressed his horror at lynchings, inspired by Lawrence Beitler 's photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. Robert Meeropol believes that this is exactly how Abel intended the song to be used. However, its delusionally “pragmatic” messaging had a real effect on liberal political discourse and practice. Thankfully though Abel Meeropol, a American songwriter, took the poem and turned it into something very distinguished. We can see the current left movement’s need for such works in the wildly successful career of a writer like Sorkin. It was also what enabled him and Anne to adopt the sons of the Rosenbergs. [23] Journalist Lara Pellegrinelli wrote that Jeff Buckley while singing it "seems to meditate on the meaning of humanity the way Walt Whitman did, considering all of its glorious and horrifying possibilities". In 1953, when he was six years old, the United States government executed his parents for "conspiring to steal the secret of the atomic bomb." I first learned the Meeropols’ story in 2018 when, as a member of Sing in Solidarity, I was taught to sing “Beloved Comrade” for a memorial to Heather Heyer—the young woman murdered in the Charlottesville terror attack in 2017. In 1945, the Meeropols, fearful of being blacklisted like Alice Citron and so many of their fellow Teachers Union members, left their teaching jobs and took off for Los Angeles. Abel Meeropol watches as his sons, Robert and Michael, play with a train set. 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During their parents’ imprisonment, the boys lived with their grandparents, spent a brief period in an orphanage, and finally were sent out of New York City to the home of family friends in Toms River, New Jersey. ‘Strange Fruit’ by Abel Meeropol is a poem on the genocide of black people in America. The sons of accused spies, taken under the wings of famous civil rights icons, wind up in the care of radical artists and activists. “There was this, that, and the other thing. But the Meeropols won the legal battle and we were reunited with them in the fall of 1954. The poem specifically focuses on the horrific lynchings that took place primarily across the American South, in which black individuals were brutally tortured and murdered—and often strung up from trees to be gawked at—by white supremacists. Ecosystem Destruction Fueled the Pandemic. Mary Filippo began in 2004 to audit economics classes in the hope that she could “learn something about globalization. [30][31], Billie Holiday's performances and recordings, Last edited on 30 December 2020, at 15:36, Review: Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights, "Strange Fruit is still a song for today", "The Strange Story of the Man Behind 'Strange Fruit, "Strange Fruit: Anniversary Of A Lynching". The point of ‘Strange Fruit’ was that it was an attack song. How Robert and Michael were going to live—and who they were going to live with—remained an open question after their parents were executed. It also made me think about how small and secretive the left was for so many decades, and in some ways continues to be. Emanuel Hirsch Bloch, the Rosenbergs’ lawyer and a renowned left-wing defense attorney who had defended numerous people accused of communist sympathies, acted temporarily as their guardian. Abel Meeropol's biography and life story. Abel and Anne Meeropol deciding to adopt the sons of the Rosenbergs, and their being in a position to actually do so, was one of those convergences so poetic it doesn’t seem real. Meeropol, his wife, and black vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square Garden. They were the famous sons of communist spies. Through this daisy chain of personal ties, the Meeropols were ultimately able to adopt Robert and Michael. Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 - October 30, 1986) was an American writer, teacher and song-writer, best known under his … Robert and Michael were raised in a loving, quirky, left-wing home. But we also need to do our own storytelling, to make creative narrative works that mythologize our own past. Hardy. Meeropol was a member of the American Communist Party, but would later quit. The left would go crazy over Jewish American dissidents Abel and Anne Meeropol if they were alive today. His show, The West Wing, is admittedly very bad art. 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