Racial discrimination is a harsh reality. The research focuses on the movie, and the song Strange Fruit. Lynching is a harsh reality of the American past. Summary. The film Strange Fruit touches on the issue of racial discrimination during the 1930s. The scene takes place in South America.
A gay African American, William, is shocked to see his boyhood friend lynched by the White Americans. He realizes that racism and lynching were still present in the 1930s. The White Americans cheered and celebrated whenever a lynching occurred. The social issue of the movie Strange Fruit focused on White supremacy over African Americans during the year 1932. The documentary shows graphic pictures of several dead African Americans hanging on trees, just like fruits (Kliment 91).
The movie is about the African American’s protest against lynching of African Americans. Both writer Abel Meeropol and African American singer, Billie Holiday, used a new venue for protesting the prevailing act of lynching African Americans after the emancipation of the African Americans until 1940s. They used pop music to spread their racial discrimination protest.
Further, the song was created by Abel Meeropol in response to seeing two African American men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith lynched. He was moved by the graphic pictures of the lynching. Whenever Billie Holiday sang the song in CafĂ© Society, the waiters would stop working and turn off the lights to listen to Billie Holiday’s last song, Strand Fruit.
In addition, Rev C. T. Vivian stated the song helped in the anti-racism protest movement. The folk singer Pete Seeger gave the criteria for a good protest song. Mr. Seeger emphasizes that a protest must focus on a popular issue.
He wrote protest songs to persuade the government to disarm its weapons of war. Mr. Seeger also wrote songs that focused on the issue of civil rights. Lastly, Mr. Seeger crafted popular songs that centered on compliance with environmental issues. In addition, Dr. Miles White was interviewed. He stated that the pop culture song rose to sentimental political protest against lynching of African Americans.
Further, I learned a lot of horrifying facts from the film. The White Americans were heartless. In terms of sociology, the people considered the lynchings as part of everyday Southern American life. Both the lyncher and the lynched characters were bound by societal roles. It is a good thing that lynching has been outlawed.
The dead African Americans looked like fruits that blood. The film is a masterpiece. It proves that lynching did happen during those horrible 1930s period.
It proves that many of the Southern American Whites, especially the Kuh Klux Klan members, were heartless monsters for treating the African Americans as pigs which often resulted in slaughter. The film can be considered a wakeup call to the White Americans. The documentary tells how heartless the Kuh Klux Klan is for orchestrating the lynching of the innocent African Americans.
How would the White Americans feel if they were lynched? However, there are still lots of room for improvement in our current society. The documentary proves that Mark Twain was telling the truth when he discussed the African American was running from the White mob that was anxious to catch and lynch the African American character. Today, lynchings can only be found in the history books. The telltale signs of racial discrimination still exist in some miniscule layers of the American society.
What is more, Angela Davies emphasized that the Jazz and Blues music genres are a beneficial venue for the successful Strange Fruit anti-racism protest. Meeropol and Holiday’s rendition of Strange Fruit is a musical articulate race and class politics in the United States. Angela Davies correctly affirms Billie Holiday’s successful protest of the lynchings. The quotation states that musical protest brings out the consciousness of people to the horrifying murders conducted in a small part of the Southern United States during the 1930s.
The essay correctly connects to the Strange Fruit movie. Based on the above discussion, one can conclude that racial discrimination was a harsh reality. The movie, Strange Fruit, portrays the horrifying lynching during the 1930s. The Strange Love song was instrumental in spreading the racial discrimination protest movement. Indeed, lynching is a harsh reality of the American past.
Works Cited
Kliment, Bud. Billie Holiday. New York: Holloway Press, 1990. Print.
Strange Fruit. Dir. J Katz. 2002.Film.