activism Abel Meeropol, a Jewish American whose family had fled pogroms in Czarist Russia, wrote Bitter Fruit as a reflection on the August 7, 1930 photo of the lynchings of J. Thomas Shipp and Abraham S. Smith in Marion, Indiana. Americans abroad United States. Adding to the macabre nature of the scene, lynching victims were typically dismembered into pieces of human trophy for mob members. 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. 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. The poem is about a group of people who lynch a black man by hanging him. Meeropol was very disturbed by the persistence of systemic racism in America and was motivated to write the poem "Bitter Fruit" after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of two Black teens . 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. community, tags: Claude McKay lays forth how he feels about the act of lynching by discussing the salvation of everyone involved. Fate is a rhetorical synonym for a god figure, and man is thus playing god when he determines the awful sin that still remained unforgiven, and leaving the victim to Fates wild whim. McKays use of diction in these lines really forces the reader to face the idea that the white man plays god when he participates in lynchings. Not all audiences appreciated Holiday's performance of the song. US armed forces The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. '", Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: Editorial on the 1936 Olympics, German Leaflet for Black American Soldiers, Program for the 1936 Schmeling-Louis Bout, Langston Hughes: "Beaumont to Detroit: 1943", W. E. B. While the lynched man is dead, a diseased or infected population remains to endanger the well-being of the fragile social fabric. All night a bright and solitary star / (Perchance the one that ever guided him, / Yet gave him up at last to Fates wild whim). "Strange Fruit," written by Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol in 1937, takes a harrowing and unflinching look at American racism. activism activism Lynchings slowed in the middle of the 20th century with the coming of the civil rights movement. Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center. 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. 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. Even when it is possible that some of the whites may not agree with this gruesome act, they will not defy the social protocol. 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. Also, the structure of McKays poem slightly reflects a sonnet. I agree that people should have there own views and understandings of right and wrong. Despite her struggles, Holiday's performance of "Strange Fruit" continued to resonateand it remains among her bestselling recordings. Officers would routinely leave a black inmates jail cell unguarded after rumors of a lynching began to circulate to allow for a mob to kill them before any trial or legal defense could take place. It became the closing number of all her live performances.5. 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. Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. I feel the rope against my bark, And the weight of him in my grain, I feel in the throe of his final woe. Beyond this, his use of the term awful in describing the sin (skin color), works to input a quick perspective of the lynchers, who believed that the victims skin color was transgression enough to justify their action. (LogOut/ An introduction tracing the groundbreaking work of African Americans in this pivotal cultural and artistic movement. And never more shall leaves come forth. Racial crimes and lynchings occurred throughout the country even up until 1955 with the Emmett Till Case. 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 McKays poem, the sonnet form and bitter tone serve as an indictment of the perverse love of lynching in the U.S. More books than SparkNotes. The legacy of such brutal, racist murders is still largely ignored. David Margolick, Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 33-34. 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. Definitions and examples of 136 literary terms and devices. During a time when violence against Black Americans was common, Holiday's haunting rendition of the song often left audiences uncomfortable. Caf Society was the first integrated cabaret in New York. music In a great many cases, the mobs were aided and abetted by law enforcement (indeed, they often were the same people). And that would be her final statement. He also points out how during this time period this was an act that was accepting. poetry & literature The poem uses quatrains to display three different messages to the reader. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana had the highest number of lynchings. And Holiday dared to perform itin front of Black and white audiences, alike. Still, punishment was not unheard of though most of the time, if white lynchers were tried or convicted, it was for arson, rioting or some other much more minor offense. McKay completes his poem by talking about the lack of white sympathy. Americans abroad The photo shows the bodies of Shipp and Smith hanging from nooses as a crowd of white people stare at their bodies. , Hung pitifully oer the swinging char. Nearly 30% were accused of murder. GradeSaver, Depicting Lynching in Poetry: Claude McKay's "The Lynching" and Dorothea Mathew's "The Lynching", Critical Analysis of Fate and Suffering in The Lynching. The EJI, which relied on the Tuskegee numbers in building its own count, integrated other sources, such as newspaper archives and other historical records, to arrive at a total of 4,084 racial terror lynchings in 12 southern states between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950, and another 300 in other states. See also the lynching report from the Equal Justice initiative. The era of "Reconstruction" following the end of the American Civil War in 1865 was marked by modest progress toward Black Americans' economic and social equality, including access to voting rights. yvonnewood said this on May 9, 2012 at 1:52 am | Reply. Then Holiday would sit by herself on a stool with only the mic and a pin spotlight on her face as she sang. Was this written for the film or was it an existing piece? Fantastic analysis! McKay's poem addresses not only the cruelty of the early to mid 1900s but also the way in which racism, ignorance and violence is passed from one generation to the next. Then suddenly everyone was clapping.. As a young woman she travelled the south for months, chronicling lynchings and gathering empirical data. In The Way Ahead, one of the characters recites the dramatic monologue The Lynching of Black Maguire. The poem became most famous as a song performed by Billie Holiday in 1939 and played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement. This is pivotal because, from the perspective of the lyncher, black bodies were objects, used to teach youth, to blame and scapegoat. Postcards bearing a photograph of a lynching were popular souvenirs and sent through the US mail without penalty. the poplar trees. And we think about Black women at that time as just big singers, but I dont think we talk enough about them using their platform to make a stand against injustice, and then the cost and the price that they paid doing that., A Time magazine critic witnessed Holidays performance and wrote a column on it, featuring pictures of Billie Holiday along with the lyrics to the song. 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. activism One of the reasons that this poem is so chilling is because of the response to the lynching. On the bough that bears the ban; I am burned with dread, I am dried and dead, From the curse of a guiltless man. In 1811, after a failed insurrection outside New Orleans, for example, whites decorated the road to the plantation where the plot failed with the decapitated heads of blacks, many of whom planters later admitted had nothing to do with the revolt. letters & correspondence Christianity , 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. A valuable resource that looks at the history of lynching and racial hatred in the According to EJI, of all lynchings committed after 1900, only 1% resulted in a lyncher being convicted of a criminal offense of any kind. View the list of all donors and contributors. 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