Today's Strange Fruit Mention of the Day comes all the way from Spain, where our former Granting Coordinator Tori Montemurro now lives and works. She reached out to share an interesting connection to the Rosenberg Fund for Children (which was founded by the adopted son of Abel Meeropol, author of "Strange Fruit") that she encountered at her new job.
She writes: "I have been teaching my students about racism in the United States for the past few weeks now and today a teacher from the school told me she wanted to show me a song that she thought I would find interesting. The song she wanted to show me was 'Strange Fruit' so naturally we got into a long conversation about my work at the RFC before I came to Spain. She told me that she first heard the song (Billie Holiday's rendition of it) and she was so moved by it that she started looking into the history of the song and of lynchings in the U.S."
Tori concludes her message with, "She was so amazed that I knew the Meeropols, it was quite funny! I just thought I'd share that Strange Fruit is even being talked about in Spain!"
It is indeed amazing how the iconic words of the protest song continue to resonate across time and even across different cultures, and we thank Tori for sharing this reminder with us 🙂