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Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to give atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. He and his older brother, Michael, were raised by Abel and his wife, Anne Meeropol, after the boys' parents - Ethel and Julius Rosenberg - were executed for espionage in 1953. "Abel Meeropol's pen name 'Lewis Allan' were the names of their children who were stillborn, who never lived," says his son, Robert Meeropol.
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The link is the pseudonym he used when writing poetry and music: Lewis Allan. He eventually quit the Communist Party.Īnd that's where the second part of Meeropol's story begins.
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Meeropol left his teaching job at Dewitt Clinton in 1945. But American Communism, one point it had in its favor was that it was concerned about civil rights very early." Journalist David Margolick, who wrote Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, says, "There are a million reasons to disparage communism now. They had not - but, like many New York teachers in his day, Meeropol was a Communist. They wanted to know whether the American Communist Party had paid him to write the song. New York lawmakers didn't like "Strange Fruit." In 1940, Meeropol was called to testify before a committee investigating communism in public schools. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.įor the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,ĭead Stop Looking For Lady Day's Resting Place? Detour Ahead While the lyrics never mention lynching, the metaphor is painfully clear:īlood on the leaves and blood at the root,īlack body swinging in the Southern breeze, When Holiday decided to sing "Strange Fruit," the song reached millions of people. He played it for a New York club owner - who ultimately gave it to Billie Holiday. An amateur composer, Meeropol also set his words to music. Meeropol once said the photograph "haunted" him "for days." So he wrote a poem about it, which was then printed in a teachers union publication. In the late 1930s, Pellison says, Meeropol "was very disturbed at the continuation of racism in America, and seeing a photograph of a lynching sort of put him over the edge." Take Five: A Jazz Sampler Evolution Of A Song: 'Strange Fruit'