Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights

David Margolick
Foreword by Hilton Als

Blood at the Root – David Margolick has written a concise, compelling anatomy of a song and its impact – this dirge, this hymn, this anthem that is needed even more today when a blatant Republican racist occupies the White House. Billie Holiday first sang “Strange Fruit” about 16 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama to a white man. For the next 20 years, the song and its most famous singer became forever intertwined, both retaining their punch to this day.