Billie Holiday, an American singer born April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia, grew up infatuated with jazz artists. Musicians like Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong inspired her to go to jazz clubs to audition and sing with their resident pianists.

She and her family moved to New York, where she gained recognition during the Harlem Renaissance and Swing eras. Around age 20, she was discovered by producer John Hammond, who helped accelerate her career, leading her to become a staple in the jazz community for years to come.

During the 1900s, many jazz musicians used their musical talents to show their disdain for the racial status quo, and Holiday was no exception. In 1939, during her run of performing at the Café Society in Greenwich Village, which was New York’s first racially integrated nightclub outside of Harlem, she performed the song “Strange Fruit.” 

This song was originally a poem titled “Bitter Fruit” by Abel Meeropol, who wrote it as a way to express his horrors after seeing a photograph of the lynchings of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. 

Its lyrics read: “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 …”

Holiday would end each of her performances with a rendition of “Strange Fruit,” and though she was fearful of retaliation from white audiences each time, she never stopped performing it. Her label refused to record a studio version of the song, so she went to her friend Milt Gabler, owner of the Commodore label, who allowed her to record. It went on to become the best-selling record of her career. 

The song became a protest anthem against the United States. However, her refusal to stop performing the song led her to become a target of the racist Federal Bureau of Narcotics commissioner Harry Anslinger, who set out to destroy her career. He had agents sell Holiday heroin to frame her, leading to her incarceration and her eventual death due to complications from heavy drug use in 1959.

If you’re interested in checking out Holiday’s music, some songs that capture her beautiful and unique voice include “Solitude,” “God Bless the Child,” “Lover Man” and “Blue Moon.”