Strange Fruit: Logansport students learn of Marion lynching, Billie Holiday song

Feb. 21—"Southern trees bear a 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."

It is one of the first things students learned about when they returned from winter break and settled into their seats in Bryan Looker's history class at Logansport High School.

He doesn't show them the whole photo. First, they see the white people crowded around, some smiling. He asks his students what they might be doing. What might the man in the middle be pointing at?

They're attending a carnival, some students say. They are at a fair, a parade.

Esther Bien-Aime, a student, said she was disgusted and speechless when Looker revealed the full picture and learned the story.

"I didn't know what to say," she said. "Really seeing it, the full picture, was just too much. It did not sit well with me at all."

The photograph is from Marion, Indiana, Aug. 7, 1930. Black teenage bodies hang dead from a tree, their clothes torn and bloodied.

White people crowd around; one pointing up at the bodies. Lawrence Beitler took their picture. More than 10 members of the mob are easily identifiable in the photograph. None were ever charged.

Shock, heartbreak, disgust

"It was shocking to me," said Aryan Patel, a student. "We were joking around. We thought they were at a baseball game or in a subway station. But then when he put the full picture up there the class got super silent."

"It was shocking," said Ashley Garcia-Quintero. "I thought they might be at a concert. But when he showed the full picture, I was disgusted."

"I was upset," said Layla Powell. "I thought they were at a football game or they were doing something with friends because they were smiling. But then when he told us it was about lynching I was like 'wow.' That's heartbreaking."

None of the students were aware of the history behind the picture, that it happened in Indiana.

"I didn't know before the class, but since it's the Midwest I always had an assumption that things had happened," said Bien-Aime.

"I thought it was predominantly in the South," said Patel. "I didn't know it came this far North in Indiana."

Strange fruit

The teenagers' names were Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith.

They were accused of shooting a white man and raping a white woman. The woman later recanted her story.

A third, James Cameron, was also accused but survived the assault.

When the man died from his gunshot wound the next day, white people traveled from across the state to join Marion residents in demanding the local sheriff hand over the accused.

When he refused, they broke into the jail and took the men one at a time. They were beaten and murdered. Cameron was saved by a someone who said he was innocent. He later served four years in jail for accessory. He dedicated his life to civil rights activism. In 1991, Governor Evan Bayh pardoned him.

Several years after the lynching, Abel Meeropol, a New York teacher, saw the photo and wrote an anti-lynching poem called "Bitter Fruit." He later added music and performed the poem as a song.

In 1939, jazz legend Billie Holiday began performing the song, now called "Strange Fruit." Her version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978 and was included in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2002.

History is uncomfortable

"I think, if you are sitting in a history course and it's comfortable, something maybe hasn't been done so well," Looker said. "I think that history should be uncomfortable sometimes. There have been things that have been done to minorities and others, and those things aren't pleasant to talk about. But they have to be talked about."

Looker, Cass County's historian, warns his white students that they may feel uncomfortable or upset, but they shouldn't feel guilty. They didn't perform the historical acts being discussed.

"Hopefully by showing these things it stops this behavior and it never happens again," he said.

It's not your fault, he tells the white students.

"What came before you is their fault," Looker said. "It's not our job as history teachers to diminish any race when we are talking about subjects that aren't easy."

Patel said he doesn't think white students should feel bad.

"I'm sure my ethnicity has done bad things before, too," he said.

"I don't think anyone should feel bad," said Garcia-Quintero. "That was our past."

Bien-Aime said she hoped the lesson helps people learn and grow.

"They can either use the information they get to stay ignorant or educate themselves," she said.

Lady Day

There are accounts of Billie Holiday's early performances of "Strange Fruit." The house lights would go down. A spotlight pierced the darkness. Holiday would stand with eyes closed. Waiters were told not to serve during the song. Her voice should be the only thing heard in the room.

Holiday was afraid to perform the song, reports say. But she sang it. And kept singing it. A video on Youtube shows Holiday singing the song in 1959 with eyes open, her pain visible.

The song has been covered by many musicians since, both Black and white. Nina Simone. Sting. John Legend. UB40. Tori Amos. Siouxsie and the Banshees. Dianna Ross. Annie Lennox. Jimmy Scott. Common.

Their own poems

Looker plays the song for his students. Then, as an assignment, he asks them to write a poem inspired by "Strange Fruit."

"They don't have to pick Marion in particular," he said. "But there are other examples from Emmett Till to a thousand others."

Looker doesn't call himself a poet, but when he first made the assignment he wrote his own poem. He read it to the class to show them that if he could do it, so could they.

"For me, it's the one assignment I think during the year that I can tell that people really want to do," he said. "They seem like they are trying to get whatever the emotions are into the writing. And this year I had several poems that were very heartfelt."

Patel said his poem had such meaning to him that it came easily.

In his poem, inspired by the Marion image, the tree is alive. It bears fruit and is a place for birds to rest and men to find shade. But then the tree becomes tainted with the acts of violence. It stands still. No apples can be found.

Bien-Aime wrote about Emmitt Till and his open-casket funeral.

"Body in the river, mother saying look if you dare," she read from her poem. "The only time a mother was hoping her child was in jail."

"It's really about a mother's pain," she said. "It's also about, my dad told me and my brother what to do if we get stopped by an officer. I incorporated that into my poem."

"Sit up straight, hands in front, and stay calm they're already afraid," the poem reads.

Be friendly, she was told. People please. Don't be seen as different.

Hope and progress

The students are hopeful. They see progress, they said.

"There's still progress to be made," said Patel. "But I don't think we should ignore the progress that has already been made. Sometimes I feel like people just comment on progress that needs to be made and don't acknowledge the progress that has already been made."

Bien-Aime said she arrived at Logansport after attending majority Black schools. She was shocked when she met people who didn't know who Rosa Parks was.

"I was really glad that Mr. Looker is putting (Black historical figures) out there for other students to learn about," she said. "It has shown how much we have grown."

Looker said they talk about progress in class and also talk about topics such as George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Tyre Nichols.

"Those are just lynchings of a different kind," he said. "It's something we can't turn away from."

Patel said he appreciated that Looker talks about the heavy modern topics. He said some teachers will shy away.

"I like how he brings it out," he said. "Instead of ignoring it for two weeks until it's not as emotional."

Powell hoped people will learn from history's mistakes, that society will keep moving forward instead of moving back.

Looker praised Powell for being instrumental in organizing Logansport High School's Black History programming.

"I feel like things have been improving," she said. "I have a lot of hope for the future that we will keep moving forward."