Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
                             -- Abel Meeropol

Lest we forget --

Sixty five years ago tomorrow, on August 7 1930, Thomas Shipp was
dragged from the jail in Marion Indiana, beaten and lynched.  When
hanged he was already dead from wounds made by a crowbar.  The mob,
thought to be around ten thousand people, went back to the jail for
Abram Smith, beat and lynched him.  When he tried to pull himself up
the rope, he was lowered, his arms broken, and raised again.  The mob
then went back for James Cameron and did the same -- but at the last
moment, with the rope around his neck, he was released.  Cameron was
sixteen; the others, I believe eighteen.  The local newspaper
photographer sold thousands of postcards in the following days at
fifty cents each.  Some of our grandparents might have been in that
mob, or any of the five thousand or so others around that time.

In sorrow,
David