AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Pacific Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

It’s been called a declaration of war, the beginning of the civil rights movement, one of 10 songs that changed the world. Time magazine named “Strange Fruit” the best song of the century. Today we’re going to talk about its origins, the origins of this controversial ballad that became Billie Holiday’s signature tune.

BILLIE HOLIDAY: [singing] 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 magnolia, 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

AMY GOODMAN: Billie Holiday, singing “Strange Fruit.”

In 1939, its performance sparked controversy, and sometimes violence, wherever Billie Holiday went. It was 16 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, 25 years before Martin Luther King led the March on Washington, 60 years before Time magazine named it the best song of the century.

Well, we’re joined right now by David Margolick, who has written a book about the origins of the song, “Strange Fruit.” The book is called Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights. David Margolck is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and, before that, was the national legal affairs editor for The New York Times.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, David.

DAVID MARGOLICK: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, who wrote the song?

DAVID MARGOLICK: The song was written by a fellow named Abel Meeropol, who was a school teacher in the Bronx and a left-wing activist, and a man who later became probably even better known for adopting the two children of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg after they were executed.

AMY GOODMAN: And what sparked him to write it?

DAVID MARGOLICK: Well, he was somebody who cared very deeply about social issues and equality and justice and civil rights. And as he told the story, he saw a picture one day of a lynching, and he was moved to write a poem about it. He was actually an incredibly creative guy, who was always writing poems and musicals and operettas and all sorts of things. And that was really his first love. Even though he was a school teacher for many years, that was his survival job. So he sat down and wrote a poem about it, set it to music, performed it with his wife in and around New York City, gave it to other people to perform. And eventually it came to Billie Holiday.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet it says “Lewis Allan” as author.

DAVID MARGOLICK: Yeah, it says “Lewis Allan,” because that was his pen name. Actually, it’s an interesting story. It was the name of the two — the names of the two children that he and his wife had, neither of whom survived infancy, Lewis and Allan.

AMY GOODMAN: Many people think it was Billie Holiday who wrote the song.

DAVID MARGOLICK: Yeah, this is a very sort of an indestructible myth, which Billie Holiday fostered herself. I mean, Billie Holiday wrote in her autobiography that she sort of revamped the song and turned it into music. And then, I think probably the major source of that misconception is the movie Lady Sings the Blues, which shows Billie Holiday, as played by Diana Ross, getting off a bus in the South during one of her tours and happening upon a lynching. And suddenly the lyrics come to her, and you hear the song in the background. And I think this is why many people think that she wrote the song, when in fact she didn’t. It was something that bothered Meeropol terribly, and he used to complain about it to everybody who repeated the idea.

AMY GOODMAN: In Lady Sings the Blues, Billie Holiday said that every time she sang the song, she would go into the bathroom afterwards and throw up. When would she sing the song?

DAVID MARGOLICK: She would sing the song when she damn well felt like singing the song, basically. She wouldn’t do it if people leaned on her too much to do it. She always did it at the end of whatever — of a set. She never did it in the middle.

There were sort of elaborate directions around — elaborate stagings around the song every time that she did it. There would never be any encores afterwards, when she did it. All the lights would go down. It was a very elaborate ritual.

She would not do the song in many places when she left New York City. It was a kind of song that could only be done in politically congenial places. And so that when she went down South, she would not — she would usually not perform the song.

She often didn’t perform the song, oddly enough, before Black audiences, because Blacks didn’t want to hear this stuff. I mean, they were well aware of lynching. They knew what was going on. And when they went out for a good time, it wasn’t always the kind of thing that they wanted to hear.

So she did it sort of strategically and very selectively, and always with an eye for her own safety. She had to be very careful about where she performed it. There were many instances where — or many, many instances, that she reported and other people mentioned, where she’d be accosted afterwards for doing it. Somebody would shout something from the audience, or would come up to her afterwards and start harassing her, when she did it. It was the same kind of thing that happened to Josh White when he did it.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get reaction from listeners around the country, so over the last week, we’ve had people calling in, remembering the first time they heard Billie Holiday sing “Strange Fruit,” and this is a sampling of some of their reaction.

CALLER 1: I can recall when I first heard the song “Strange Fruit.” My father, who was of African and Latino ancestry, played it for me and my younger sister. We were both approximately about 14 and 11, respectively. And I will never forget the day that he played it, because she and I started to dance to the song or sway to the song, as children often do, and my father stopped us, and he said, “It’s not a song to dance to. It’s a song to listen to.”

CALLER 2: When I was in high school in the early '50s, the most popular singers were Patti Page and Guy Mitchell. And when I went to college at the University of Denver, down at the May Company they had a booth where you could listen to records. And I saw an album by some guy I never heard of with the name of Billie Holiday. And I put it on, because it was a new name to me. And that's — the first song I heard was “Strange Fruit.” And suddenly, I knew why people connected to music. It was like a tidal wave of emotions that came over me listening to it. And for the first time, I heard an artist and a song that I could connect with, for some curious reason. So, there were I was, 18 years old, in downtown Denver, all by myself, having this great epiphany and revelation and emotional — and “Strange Fruit” and Billie Holiday have been part of me ever since.

IMAN: Yes, my name is Iman. I listen to WBAI. I’m a member of WBAI. I’m calling from Newark, New Jersey. I’m calling in reference to this song. I remember the sadness in Billie Holiday’s voice when I — when my mother would play this song, as a child. But I was too young to understand the lyrics. And it was only as an adult, as I got older, that when I listened carefully to the words, that’s when I remembered the part about the bulging eyes and the scent of flesh burning. That is when I understood that they were speaking — that she was singing about a Black man hanging from a tree. I’ll never forget that. The song had touched me so much that all I could do was cry. I continue to cry 'til this day whenever I hear the song played. It makes me very angry to think that white America hated Black people so much. And I recently learned the history of this song, that I found very touching, as well, and how Billie Holiday performed this song after each show, that she wouldn't — you know, she didn’t expect an applause, and she would just leave the stage, and how it affected her. But I, to this day now, I continue to be sad. I continue to hurt and feel the pain and think about the history of people of color, Blacks especially, in America, and the injustice that has been done. Thank you for giving me this opportunity, for it’s hard to express so much pain that I feel.

AMY GOODMAN: And thank you to our listeners around the country. We were inundated with calls as people remembered their first experience of “Strange Fruit.” David Margolick, its relevance today?

DAVID MARGOLICK: Well, this is an issue that’s never gone away. I mean, we just heard about, you know, the death penalty case in Texas. It’s all part of a continuum. And, you know, people aren’t hanging from trees anymore, but the same kinds of issues of injustice and summary justice still exist. This song resonates today as powerfully as ever, and it can still stop an audience, because people know that these conditions still exist.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go out with Dee Dee Bridgewater singing this song. In the last few seconds, can you tell us the story about it?

DAVID MARGOLICK: Well, it’s interesting that, like many people, Dee Dee Bridgewater was reluctant to perform this song. Billie Holiday casts a wide shadow over it, and the material is just so painful. And she finally readied herself to sing it, and sang it during a European tour, and sang it one night in Italy. And just afterwards, she broke down crying and resolved never to sing it again, because it was just too hard.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, David Margolick, your book, Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights, by Running Press.

I wanted to repeat the number of George Bush’s office, in the case of Gary Graham, slated to die on Thursday. It is 512-463-2000. That’s 512-463-2000.

Democracy Now! produced by David Love and Jeremy Scahill. Happy Birthday, David! Our engineer is Anthony Sloan. Our technical director is Errol Maitland. From the studios of WBAI in New York, I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!