Strange Fruit Mention of the Day: This is a great piece (*w/ a few errors, noted below) from author Tayo Aluko in The Progressive. Abel Meeropol, who adopted Ethel & Julius Rosenberg's two sons, is best known for having written the lyrics for the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit", but he also wrote the lyrics to "The House I Live in" which envisioned a democratic, anti-racist America.

Strange Fruit Mention of the Day: Today we're listening to "I Can't Breathe" by H.E.R., a powerful protest song named 2021 "Song of the Year" at the Grammys, written in response to recent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other unarmed Black people "who we are still fighting for." H.E.R. evokes Billie Holiday's performance of the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" with the lyrics: “That kind of uncomfortable conversation is too hard for your trust-fund pockets to swallow/ To swallow the strange fruit hanging from my family tree.”

Strange Fruit Mention of the Day: "When Billie Holiday became famous for singing Strange Fruit, not many knew the story behind its Jewish composer and lyricist, Abel Meeropol. . .The iconic song began life in 1937 as a poem written by Meeropol, a Jewish writer, teacher and songwriter of Russian-Jewish extraction, under his pseudonym Lewis Allan."