Από την Βικιπαίδεια, η ιστορία ενός συγκλονιστικού κομματιού:
"Strange Fruit" began as a poem about the lynching of a black man written by a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx Abel Meeropol, who used the pen name Lewis Allan (the names of his two children, who died in infancy). Meeropol and his wife were also the adoptive parents of the children of the executed spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in the 1950s. "Strange Fruit" was written as a poem expressing his horror at the lynchings, and was first published in 1937 in The New York Teacher, a union magazine. Though Meeropol/Allan often asked others (notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music he set Strange Fruit to music himself and the song gained a certain success as a protest song in and around New York. Before Holiday was introduced to the song, it had been performed by Meeropol, by his wife, and by black vocalist Laura Duncan, who performed it at Madison Square Garden.
Kαι το κομμάτι πρώτα από την ανεπανάληπτη Billie Holiday και μετά από τον αγαπημένο Robert Wyatt.
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
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.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.