Billie Holiday ends her set with Strange Fruit

March 1939: Number 13 in our series of the 50 key events in the history of jazz musicEarly in 1939, a New York teacher called Abel Meeropol – aka Lewis Allan – wrote a song inspired by the lynching of two black men in the deep south. In April of that year, he went to New York's first integrated club, Cafe Society in Greenwich Village, and was introduced to the cult venue's star turn, a young Billie Holiday. Meeropol sang Holiday his song and gave her the lyrics; a week later she ended her se...

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