Today in English, we went to this assembly on racism. The speaker was a young man, presumably a teacher's husband, and the first thing he did was sing Strange Fruit and discuss what it was written about. I don't know if you guys know what "lynching" is, but it's the "extrajudicial execution of a population of people". He talked about how the Civil War ended over a hundred years ago, and how the Civil Rights Movement was fifty years, and how racism never ended and probably never will end. He also got into the fact that Civil War actually made racism WORSE, which is completely true. After that came herding us all into the orchestra pit, and me getting stuck in a group of people I did not like. He then told us to imagine that that we were all naked, on a ship for three months, and my heart fell. Next on the projector, there was a picture of the quilt a woman had made. It was the lyrics to the song, only they were sideways and you had to turn your head to read the words. When I looked up, I realized it looked like everyone around me had been hanged. And then came the talk of sundown towns, and how where we live is surrounded by places that still blare that siren at sundown. It was all very horrific, but I could help but laugh at his mannerisms- he was hilarious in a morbid way. Incase you guys want to know, here all the words to the song written by Abel Meeropol:
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.
