By Gabrielle Rodrigue

Title: Strange Fruit
Artist: Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra
Year: 5/1/1939
Label: Commodore Records
Genre: Jazz

Southern trees bear a 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 a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

 

Billie Holiday is not mentioned in A Lesson Before Dying, but she would have been playing on Jefferson’s radio in 1948. It is easy to imagine Jefferson hearing Holiday’s beautiful voice singing about the strange crop in the southern trees. 

The lyrics of "Strange Fruit" were written by Abel Meeropol as a poem in reaction to lynching in the United States. The lyrics tell of a time when lynching was at its height, when Black people were treated as non-citizens unprotected by the law. On the surface, the song's lynching narrative seems a little too far in the past to be of significance to the story of Jefferson. Lynching, however, has had an everchanging role in the history of America, particularly the American South. What started as an informal policing of black bodies by the majority white population during times of slavery, did not end there. Traditionally, lynching is defined as the public execution of individuals which is not regulated through the judicial system. The unrest with lynching began to grow especially within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and lynching began to become more scarce; however, from this, legal lynching was born. Legal lynching is a form of lynching which employs the systemically racist justice system of the Jim Crow era to legally kill black people especially black men. This was a commonplace practice and continues to have connections to today. 

Jefferson’s execution could be considered a legal lynching as it happens through the justice system. In chapter one, Gaines’ third person narrator shows us that Jefferson did not kill Mr. Gropé. The primary concern of the novel is not whether Jefferson committed murder, rather everyone seems to know that he’s innocent. Jefferson’s community understands legal lynching. They know they can’t change the verdict, but they can change the way Jefferson sees himself.