Essay: What is “Strange fruit” about and how does it describe the relationship between the black and the white population?

Strange Fruit is an anti-racist poem written by Lewis Allan in 1939. Since he wrote the poem to express his horror toward lynching, we can describe the poem as an Early Cry for Civil Rights, which for many came to symbolize the beginning of The Civil Rights Movement. Allan’s poem later became the lyrics in the song that was one of the most favorite songs performed by the famous black singer Billie Holiday.
The song, which is divided into three parts, each of which contains four stanzas, follows the regular rhyme scheme a, a, b, b. The lyrics describe two hanged black men as “strange fruit”, because they were black. In the first verse we learn that strange fruit is synonymous with black bodies The word fruit is thus the focal point in the text, because one normally thinks of fruit as being something delicious or idyllic, but in this poem fruit is describes as something bad. In the second verse the writer makes use of bitter irony. In the first stanza he contrasts the description of the setting and the “fruit” like “Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” The contrast will show the brutality He describes “Gallant south” and adds the “bulging eyes” and the “twisted mouth” as if they belonged there and were natural parts of the picture. In the last stanza it is obvious how unprotected the corpses are hanging in the trees and how nobody cares about their deaths. “Here is the 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”. In the last verse he once again describes the corpses as fruits, how the blacks are simply killed to be forgotten and how the whites do not believe the lives of blacks have any value. This poem is trying to describe white Americans’ treatment of black Americans, while the hangings simultaneously would get blacks to realize and become aware of how unfair their treatment is. Lewis Allan wanted people to realize that this form of racial discrimination and segregation was something one should not close one’s eyes to, but rather something one should speak loudly about, so that the problem can be eradicated.
How does Martin Luther King describe the racism in “I have a dream”?
In his now famous Freedom Speech, which he gave on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King begins with the emancipation of the slaves and mentions later that despite being freed from those bonds by the American president, Abraham Lincoln, blacks are still not free. King claims that because black men and women were issued a check and a promise of freedom and those checks had come back with “insufficient funds”, then “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”
King demanded that the black people get the same justice as everybody as it is promised to all citizens in the Declaration of Independence but he hoped to the obtain equality through non-violent movement.
We can separate the speech into two parts: The first half portrays not an idealised American dream but a picture of a seething American nightmare of racial Injustice. In the first half King used the metaphor of a bad check to describe how America kills mistreated African Americans, despite the words in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence which grants all people the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the second half of the speech, where he painted the dream of a better, fairer future of racial harmony and integration, he told the audience that now is the time to fight for democracy and brotherly love.
King urged blacks not to hate other races just because they have for so long suffered discrimination. In his speech, he described segregation as being something that stood in the way of one’s faith and therefore must be eradicated. King also urged people to keep having faith and not to “wallow in the valley of despair.” He stated that even though blacks experienced great troubles, he had a dream that this nation would rise up and become truly equal and that one day, all across the United States, there would no longer be injustice or oppression.
Collection of the two texts and assess the impact they had on the blacks struggle for equality.
Both texts describes something one really did not talk about back then, when racial discrimination was something that white Americans viewed as something normal, while black Americans did not really dare to fight for their rights because they feared they would lose their lives. Lewis Allan’s song is a testament to how badly blacks were treated and how they were “crying” for their freedom. Martin Luther King stepped up and was ready to lose his life for his people. Both texts give us a glimpse of how the Afro-Americans have fought for their rights and how much they have been through. Strange Fruit was the first song that dealt with this problem; one can therefore say that this song perhaps become the one, that helped black Americans to understand that the way, they had been treated by white Americans was not okay.
The song also helped make something public, which, until then had only been talked about within the confines and safety of their homes, namely that one must fight for equal rights for all races. Martin Luther King’s speech brought the people together in public and said all that aloud which each person had been secretly thinking, which was that he would like that all blacks should share the same rights as whites. Both texts have therefore had a major impact on the black struggle for equality since they both encourage people to fight for their rights.