A song’s history being as entertaining as the piece of music itself is a rare thing.

“Strange Fruit,” why it was written and how it wound up in the hands of Billie Holiday seem like a series of random occurrences. And at a time when segregation was the norm, even in the North, there weren’t too many places for a white song writer to come into contact with a 24 year old, black, jazz singer.

Writing under the name of Lewis Allan to shield himself from the possible fall out, Abel Meeropol penned “Strange Fruit in 1936 and had it published by the New York Teacher, a union publication. It’s likely that the impetus for the song stems from Meeropol seeing a photograph of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, who had been hung in Indiana. Uncovering the pictures of that lynching today, viewers should still be shocked by not just the brutality of the event, but by the fact that children loitered around while the murders and subsequent photo opportunity transpired.

Originally written as a poem, Meeropol first read “Strange Fruit” at a labor meeting. Greeted with a positive response, the De Witt Clinton High School English teacher decided to set the lyric to music. Though debated later on, Meeropol alone composed the song despite conflicting views from Holiday herself and a few detractors.

What makes the entirety of this more interesting are the staunch political views that Meeropol fostered. “Strange Fruit” was undoubtedly a protest song, which is proofed not just by the song’s lyrical content, but by the litany of singers who covered which include Nina Simone, Lou Rawls, Robert Wyatt and Josh White. A devout, although low key, Communist, the song writer never published under his own name for fear of reprisal and the potentiality of loosing his job.

A friend of Meeropol’s, though, owned the only integrated night club in New York City. Café Society was founded and run by Barney Josephson in Greenwich Village during 1938. As a favor to Meeropol, Josephson approached Billie Holiday about performing “Strange Fruit.” Later in 1939, Holiday sang the vivid, lyrical recreation of a lynching in front of an audience.

There had always been a political strain of music in American culture, Woody Guthrie being as good an example as anyone else. Holiday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit” proved to be the first time that jazz fans were being confronted with such startling imagery. For this very reason, Holiday’s record label, Columbia, refused to record and release the song citing the rash of negative publicity the album would receive.

Relentlessly, Holiday approached John Hammond, a talent scout who discovered not just jazz players, but country styled performers like Leadbelly as well. He declined. Luckily, though, Commodore Records eventually released “Strange Fruit” on a 78rpm single in both 1939 and 1944.

Even with Meeropol’s surprising entrance into the craft of songwriting, he persisted for a great many years. While there wouldn’t be another song as immediately important to the wider culture, he was able to pen “The House I Live In” for Frank Sinatra amongst a few other efforts that would hit the charts.