70 years of 1st recording of "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday

The Commodore Records has proved crucial to Billie Holiday, because it was the only one who accepted the risk of record "Strange Fruit" in April 1939, open expression of the struggle of American blacks for civil rights.
The critic Ralph Gleason liked to say that Billie was only happy when he sang. And do not resist the metaphor: "When not singing, she was the living embodiment of the words of" Strange Fruit ", not hung on a tree but the branches of life itself." The song was the strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees south bodies black and the smell of blood in the air.

Strange Fruit
“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”

Although it sounds like a fictional scenario, the verses were written by a Jewish professor and white Bronx, NY, and were inspired by real events.
In 1939, Billie Holiday had a small conflict with her label, Columbia, because I wanted to write a song composed by a man named Lewis Allan (pseudonym of a Jewish professor author of "Strange Fruit"). After much discussion it was decided that the already acclaimed singer obtain a license to write the music to another label, the little Commodore - whose owner, Milt Gabler, began to cry like a baby after she sang Billie him a capella version of the song .

In the same year, in a compact 78 rpm, went "Strange Fruit". The song was a huge success, it was the high point (and final) act for Lady Day All lights were extinguished and only one source of light was lit on the singer, then she spun the sad verses about that scene of horror in south.
And the lyrics are sadder still when we know the song, composed by Abel Meerpool (the Jewish professor who used the pseudonym Lewis Allan), was inspired by a photograph shocking, very shocking.
The picture was taken on 7 April 1930, when a mob lynched Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, both 19, in Indiana - and barely got a third man, named James Herbert Cameron, 16. The three blacks were accused of robbing and killing a white man and raping his girlfriend. Before they received a trial, were killed and hung by the crowd.

The lynchings were quite common in certain areas of the United States this season - especially black men accused - or not - of crimes against whites. They were also used as a way of intimidating blacks and keep them away from the polls and exercise any of his (few) rights of citizens. After the photographer Lawrence Beitler recorded the scene that inspired the song "Strange Fruit" (and sold thousands of copies of this same photo to 50 cents each), however, they no longer happen. Was the impact of music?

James Cameron escaped alive, wrote the autobiography "Time of Terror: A Survivor's Story" ( "Time of Terror: The Story of a Survivor") and founded the American Museum of the Holocaust Negro, in the words of the institution's own website , aims to educate the public about the injustices suffered by people of black ancestry, while providing visitors an opportunity to rethink their assumptions about race and racism. " It exists today in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
Text of "TUDO É JAZZ" FESTIVAL (Brazil)