My thoughts on "Strange Fruit".

When I read the lyrics and listened to "Strange Fruit" performed by Billie Holiday, I felt that she was telling a gruesome story of how African-Americans during the 1950's and 1960's were being treated in various negative ways simply because of the color of their skin. As it was said in the second stanza, "Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh". Basically, she was telling us about how good the magnolias smells and the beauty of the South, however; she was also talking about how young African-American men were being lynched by white people and left there to die. It was like they were being burned by the sun or by the angry white people. "Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck..." was lie a metaphor for the birds to pick at the decaying flesh hanging from the tree branches saying that they can easily spot a deceased body from miles away. Overall the song was about the worse cases of racism occuring in the South and getting the nation's attention into what was going on at that particular time.