Among the most unsettling realities of lynching is the degree to which white Americans embraced it, not as an uncomfortable necessity or a way of maintaining order, but as a joyous moment of wholesome celebration. The founder of the nightclub had heard Meeropol perform his song and asked him to play it for Holiday, who was the club's headline performer at the time. The situation of a man being hung for something he could not control is used to make the reader feel guilt. The "strange fruit" of the poem's title refers to these lynching victims, the gruesome image of "black bodies" hanging from "southern trees" serving as a stark reminder of humanity's potential for violence as well as the staggering cost of prejudice and hate. "The House I Live In" During this time lynching had become a common practice. Shipp and Smith, along with a third teenager, James Cameron, were accused of murdering a white factory worker during an armed robbery and raping his female companion. The murder case was never solved. This poem is in the public domain. At first, Holiday was hesitant to sing it. Any human who willingly harms another human being because of racism, according to McKay, has no place in heaven. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Men joked loudly at the sight of the bleeding body girls giggled as the flies fed on the blood that dripped from the Negros nose.. activism (including. This is the (graphic and disturbing)photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930 that inspired the composition of the poem. law & the courts She was sent toAlderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginiafor a year. The poem is about a group of people who lynch a black man by hanging him. Holiday turned to Commodore Records, an independent alternative jazz label. With lynchings, the victims would be accused of crimes, often petty or false, and hung from trees as a way of a ritual with groups watching. A valuable resource that looks at the history of lynching and racial hatred in the The women thronged to look, but never a one / Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue; / And little lads, lynchers that were to be, / Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee, in these lines(eleven through fourteen), McKay writes about how the women came in masses to look, as he describes the women thronged to look, but never felt anything because these women, as a mass, had been desensitized to the lynching. Opening lines emphasize ascendency of spirit, from the "swinging char" to the father in heaven in whose bosom the hanged man will dwell. The writing wasnt simply about the pastit was happening at that moment., READ MORE: 11 Anthems of Black Pride and Protest Through American History. These executions were often carried out by lawless mobs, though police officers did participate, under the pretext of justice. The Lynching essays are academic essays for citation. I probably would not have picked up on this if you did not mention it. Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, blues legend Billie Holiday sang in her powerful 1939 recording of the song, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. The songs lyrics portray the everyday violence that was being inflicted on Black people. In the Bible, Christ is crucified for claiming to be the son of God; he is hung on the cross in a ceremonial setting with crowds watching. Then a lone person began to clap nervously. One woman held her little girl up so she could get a better view of the naked Negro blazing on the roof, wrote Arthur Raper in The Tragedy of Lynching. Some felt it reinforced an idea ofBlack peopleas victims, while others praised it for exposing the horrors of lynching. The lynching took place on August 7, 1930, in the town center of Marion, Indiana. In 1936, a Jewish American public high school teacher in New York City named Abel Meeropol saw a photograph of the lynching of two Black teenagers, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith.4The photograph disturbed Meeropol so much that he wrote a poem about it titled "Bitter Fruit." In order to settle a razor-thin and contested presidential election between the Republican Rutherford B Hayes and the Democrat Samuel Tilden, northern Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the last of the formerly renegade states. McKay proposes this allusion to appeal to the pathos of the reader to elicit sorrow. Also, the structure of McKays poem slightly reflects a sonnet. Jim Crow also referred to a way of life under JIm crow laws etiquette expectations, African American were viewed and treated as second class citizens and experienced common discrimination and racism. Web. 2023 A&E Television Networks, LLC. The Memphis journalist Ida B Wells was the most strident and devoted anti-lynching advocate in US history, and spent a 40-year-career writing, researching and speaking on the horrors of the practice. hope The song helped raise Holiday to national prominenceat just age 23. And they often talk about how the white audiences would be uncomfortable to clap., Whitehead, who is also founding director of the The Karson Institute For Race, Peace & Social Justice adds: We often think about Billie Holiday as a singer. In this case, lynching of the blacks was a norm, and many did not feel remorseful for this atrocity. Later that year it was included in McKay's Spring In New Hampshire and Other Poems (1920). She worried that the customers at the nightclub came simply to be entertained and would not be receptive to a political song. EMBED TWEET HERE. Fort Bend County announced on Monday a $4 million investment for the creation of a new African-American Memorial at a park in Kendleton . In the state of slavery he learned politeness from association with white people who took pains to teach him. The "strange fruit" of the poem's title refers to these lynching victims, the gruesome image of "black bodies" hanging from "southern trees" serving as a stark reminder of humanity's potential for violence as well as the staggering cost of prejudice and hate. This is why he uses so much religious imagery. McKay wants his readers to understand that societal beliefs and customs are not always what is best or right. Sixteen-year-old James Cameron narrowly survived after being beaten by the mob. Nearly 30% were accused of murder. In October 1939, a music critic for theNew York Post wrote of "Strange Fruit": "If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise. More books than SparkNotes. And that would be her final statement. The mob turned the act into a symbolic rite in which the black victim became the representative of his race and, as such, was being disciplined for more than a single crime The deadly act was [a] warning [to] the black population not to challenge the supremacy of the white race.. activism In 1712, colonial authorities in New York City manacled, burned and broke on the wheel 18 enslaved blacks accused of plotting for their freedom. Only the first two lines are recited: "It was hot that . To bookmark items, please log in or create an account. View the list of all donors and contributors. White planters had long used malevolent and highly visible. We would like to thank The Alexander Grass Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for Experiencing History. The awful sin was the victims skin color, which remained unforgiven by the men who hanged him; its interesting how McKay uses the term awful sin because sin is something you commit, and the victims skin color was nothing in his control. And Holiday dared to perform itin front of Black and white audiences, alike. Asked by Wizyblack W #1155421 Answered by jill d #170087 2 years ago 5/31/2021 3:07 AM For more on lynching in the United States during the 1930s, see the related item NAACP Anti-Lynching Leaflet. Racial crimes and lynchings occurred throughout the country even up until 1955 with the Emmett Till Case. As a young woman she travelled the south for months, chronicling lynchings and gathering empirical data. President Biden signed into law last March a bill with overwhelming bipartisan support that would make lynching a federal hate crime. McKay also uses the diction and language of this line to again allude to the victim as a Christ figure, and paradox the situation at hand. The charred remains of the victim were divided piece by piece, wrote Raper. Detailed quotes explanations with page numbers for every important quote on the site. McKays connections between the historical moment of Christs death and the death of the lynching victim was an appeal to pathos made through comparison and kairos. Americans abroad letters & correspondence, type: The fact that children were happy about the death of the lynched black man vividly describes how whites had felt about blacks at the time. I feel the rope against my bark, And the weight of him in my grain, I feel in the throe of his final woe. The 1930s was a trying time for colored people in the United States. DuncanHill 14:25, 5 September 2018 (UTC) Reply . Print. Memphis journalist Ida B Wells was the most strident and devoted anti-lynching advocate in US history. The exodus of some 6 million black Americans between 1910 and 1970 was pushed by racial terror and a waning agricultural economy and pulled by a surfeit of industrial job opportunities. Although the victims of lynchings were members of various ethnicities, after roughly 4 million enslaved African Americans were emancipated, they became the primary targets of white Southerners. This article was amended on 1 May 2018 to correct the date of the 1811 New Orleans slave rebellion. US armed forces Anslinger, who openly espoused racist views, saw to it that Holiday, who struggled with drug use, was targeted, pursued andarrestedin 1947 for possession of narcotics. The mob wanted the lynching to carry a significance that transcended the specific act of punishment, wrote the historian Howard Smead in Blood Justice: The Lynching of Mack Charles Parker. activism Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2006. It was an attempt to undermine Black families and destabilize the entire African American community, while simultaneously reaffirming southern whites' rabid power. Google can only find it in the film script, so it looks as though it was made up. In a subversion of expectations that is not unlike McKays, the river sob[s], the pigeons freedom in the blue sky only contrasts with the victims entrapment, and the poems description of the night, like the victims life itself, is suddenly cut short by the dash at the end of the line: the night was warm and brown. And like McKays star that hung over the corpse, Mathewss little stars of God look down on the scene; while not as mordant as McKay, then, Mathews similarly depicts a nature and a divinity that does nothing to stop these horrors. This sin is probably from the believe that blacks were black due to Gods cursing of Ham. The Memphis Evening Scimitar published in 1892: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Aside from the violation of white women by Negroes, which is the outcropping of a bestial perversion of instinct, the chief cause of trouble between the races in the South is the Negros lack of manners. Meeropol was the child of Jewish immigrants who had fled pogroms in Russia, and his activism was inspired by his family's history facing antisemitic violence and hatred. Americans abroad United States. More often than not, victims would be dismembered and mob members would take pieces of their flesh and bone as souvenirs. Black bodies swinging Strange Fruit was written during a decade when activist organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were pressing lawmakers to make lynching a federal crime. I will look out for that in the future poems! ", W. E. B. Additionally, McKay uses the physical description of the women in the crowd to emphasize the differences between blacks and whites during that time. , McKay chooses to use diction in an interesting way, as by capitalizing Fate, as if to say fate was a higher being or sense of control. This then brings the reader back to the idea of how can a man determine what is divine law, and is man then playing god? The haunting lyrics of Strange Fruit paint a picture of a rural American South where political and psychological terror reigns over African American communities. visual art, tags: A lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process. Youre right, this picture is very graphic, but I think it really drives home the image connected to fiendish glee. In your post, you attribute the use of religious rhetoric to the salvation of everyone involved, and the awful sin a reference to the sin of blacks being sinful in the eyes of whites. I think this is a great example of close reading, however, I tend to think that McKays use of religious concepts were in complete mockery of the religious connection to the justification of slavery. The lynching in itself is an extreme act of violence but the way the crowd viewed it was the most important part of the poem in my perspective. poetry & literature leisure & recreation group violence refugees & immigration, type: Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee. activism The touch of my own last pain. Since the emancipation came and the tie of mutual interest and regard between master and servant was broken, the Negro has drifted away into a state which is neither freedom nor bondage , In consequence there are many negroes who use every opportunity to make themselves offensive, particularly when they think it can be done with impunity . For Christian readers, or anyone with an understanding of the Bible, the death of Christ is where Christ died for the sins of humankind, despite having done nothing wrong. On August 7, 1930, a mob of ten to fifteen thousand whites abducted three young black men from the jail in Marion, Indiana, lynching Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. / Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view /The ghastly body swaying in the sun, McKay set the scene through diction and imagery, saying that the star (that guided yet failed him), hung pitifully over the swinging char. McKay says swinging char as if to objectify the body that hung burnt beneath the stars. In a great many cases, the mobs were aided and abetted by law enforcement (indeed, they often were the same people). The first tree lines of the poem portray the victim as a Christ . During a time when violence against Black Americans was common, Holiday's haunting rendition of the song often left audiences uncomfortable. In his poem "The Lynching," Claude McKay uses the event of a black man being lynched to highlight the racism and gruesome acts of violence committed against blacks in America during the early twentieth century. The start of the lynching era is commonly pegged to 1877, the year of the Tilden-Hayes compromise, which is viewed by most historians as the official end of Reconstruction in the US south. The him is referring to the African American race as a whole. While the lynched man is dead, a diseased or infected population remains to endanger the well-being of the fragile social fabric. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2006. The Lynchings Posted on February 13, 2014 by oliphantgg It is obvious from the title of Claude McKay's 1920 poem entitled "Lynching," that it is heavily reflective of the the historical context of the time. The sadism of white men: why America must atone for its lynchings, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Lynching of a black man, 1882. The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder, A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells, Tourists walk into his shop and stare at the lone card in the glass case. group violence, tags: McKay set the scene through diction and imagery, saying that the star (that guided yet failed him), hung pitifully over the swinging char. McKay says swinging char as if to objectify the body that hung burnt beneath the stars. I really like your analysis. Du Bois: "A Forum of Fact and Opinion: Race Prejudice in Nazi Germany", Robert Durr: Oh, Church Wake Up, For the Sake of Peace. A freedom that McKay still sees to be false in 1920 when lynchings were still occurring. They became widely practiced in the US south from roughly 1877, the end of post-civil war reconstruction, through 1950. The song issung by Frank Sinatra in the film. Individuals and small groups could throw bombs, perform drive-by shootings and torch a house, as the resurgence of the KKK and similar violent white hate groups proved. When these religious references are included in a poem about something as horrible as lynching, I think it is used to highlight the hypocrisy and wrongness of anything that is used to say these actions might be justified. Whole families came together, mothers and fathers, bringing even their youngest children. McKay completes his poem by talking about the lack of white sympathy. Yet gave him up at last to Fates wild whim), Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view, The women thronged to look, but never a one. The poem uses quatrains to display three different messages to the reader. Your email address will not be published. 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