The character Lewis Johns (Mekhi Phifer) recites "Strange Fruit" to his fellow recruits in their barracks at one point in the movie to describe lynchings that took place, especially in the South, in the early 20th century. "Strange Fruit" is a 1939 song sung by Billie Holiday which in turn was inspired by a 1936 poem by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish teacher in the Bronx, after he witnessed the lynchings of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana in that year.