Billie Holiday
In the 1930s, Holiday was recording for Columbia Records. She heard of a song called "Strange Fruit". It was based on a poem about lynching written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. The poem had been set to music and was performed at teachers' union meetings. It was heard by a night club owner called Barney Josephson and he told Holiday about it. She sang the song at Josephson's club in 1939. At first she was worried that it might make people angry. She later said that the song reminded her of her father's death, and that this was partly why she did not want to perform it at first. In a 1958 interview, she also said that many people did not understand what the song meant: "They'll ask me to sing that sexy song about the people swinging", she said.