Say Something Real
By Michelle Bryant
Michelle Bryant
There are songs that haunt the American soul, but none more so than “Strange Fruit.” First made famous by Billie Holiday in 1939, its mournful melody and searing lyrics hold a mirror to the ugliest chapters of our nation’s past. Lynching.
Recently, I heard a pastor say, “You can’t fix what you won’t face.” America has failed to reconcile the hate that fueled these acts. Lynchings of the past are mirrored today and appear in modern headlines. It was through the work of journalists like Ida B. Wells that the horrific descriptions of lynchings were laid bare. Black media sounded the alarm then, and we need to sound it now.
“Strange Fruit” began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from New York. Moved by a 1930 photograph of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith—two Black men lynched in Marion, Indiana—Meeropol penned the poem as both a lament and a call to conscience. The words, “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root,” evoke the horror of Black bodies hanging from trees, a grotesque reminder of America’s legacy of racial terror.
Meeropol understood what it meant to be an outsider, to feel vulnerable to the whims of hate. Yet, it was Billie Holiday’s voice—aching, wounded, and resolute—that seared the message into America’s collective consciousness.
Lynching is not just history; it is an ongoing reality. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, more than 4,400 African Americans were lynched between 1877 and 1950. Of all lynchings documented in America, nearly 72% of victims were Black. These acts were not only murders but public spectacles, meant to instill fear, assert white supremacy, and enforce a racial hierarchy.
Despite the passage of time, we are witnessing a resurgence of this form of terror. In recent years, the headlines have been chillingly familiar. Recent cases include Deondrey Montreal Hopkins, 35, (ruled it was not a homicide), Phillip Carroll, 22, found hanging from a tree, in Mississippi (ruled a suicide), Otis Byrd, 55, was found hanging from a tree in Mississippi (ruled a suicide) and on September 15, 2025, Demartravion “Trey” Reed, 21, was found hanged from a tree on the campus of Delta State University (trying to rule it a suicide).
I’m not saying that Black people don’t commit suicide, but hanging ourselves from trees? These cases are suspicious. As we wait for an independent autopsy of Mr. Reed, for many Black Americans, the wounds are reopened, the doubts persist, and the grief is compounded by a legacy of distrust.
These tragedies land with a particular weight. The trauma is not abstract. It is generational, inherited, and deeply personal. It is also important to remember that Wisconsin is not exempt from this dark history. In 1855, a mob lynched John Baptiste DuBay, near Portage, and George Marshall Clark, in Milwaukee, in 1861. These events serve as a sobering reminder: racial terror knows no geographic boundaries.
The imagery of lynching is not distant history—it is a lived reality, a shadow that stretches from the past into the present. Black media needs to sound the alarm again! Silence is not an option. While “strange fruit” still appears on American soil, hope and resistance continue to bloom. Our struggle is not just to remember, but to demand that this country finally reckon with, and end this ignorance.