"Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies 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 magnolias, 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.

The Story Behind “Strange Fruit” - YouTube (10 mins)

The Digital Journalist
"Lynching 1930
A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations were called the sentence of “Judge Lynch.”) Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to boost white supremacy, but the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting as many as they scared. Today the images remind us that we have not come as far from barbarity as we’d like to think.

"Brown Eyed Handsome Man"
by Chuck Berry

Arrested on charges of unemployment
He was sittin in the witness stand
The judge's wife called up the district attorney
To say "free that brown eyed man"
If you want your job you'd better free that brown eyed man.

Flyn' across the desert in the TWA
I saw a woman walking across the sand
She been walkin 30 miles en route to Bombay
To meet a Brown eyed handsome man
Her destination was a Brown eyed handsome man.

Way back in history 3000 years
Back ever since the world began
There's been a whole lotta good women she'd a tear For a brown eyed handsome man
A lot of trouble for a brown eyed handsome man.

Beautiful daughter couldn't make up her mind
'tween a doctor and a lawyer man
The mother told the daughter "go out and find
Yourself a brown eyed handsome man"
That's what your daddy was: a brown eyed handsome man.

Milo Venus was a beautiful lass            
She had the world at the palm of her hand      But she lost both the arms in a wrestling match                     
To get a brown eyed handsome man            
She fought and won herself a brown eyed handsome man.                                                                                                        
Two, three, the count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stand
Round the third he was headed for home
He was a brown eyed handsome man.
That won the game. He was a brown eyed handsome man.
Chuck Berry w/ Robert Cray - YouTube (2 mins)