Really interesting backstory regarding the song "Strange Fruit" (Graphic Warning):

[demmiblue]

Link to tweet

[peppertree]

1. Small wonder that Harry Anslinger had Holiday killed

Famously, when she was in the hospital, his FBN prevented her from getting care - thus assuring her death.

Typical Gestapo tactics - and bad karma if there ever was any.

[Archae]

5. Anslinger is pretty much responsible for the hysterics about smoking pot.

Anslinger was a racist, who said smoking weed made blacks and Hispanics into vicious rapists.

[peppertree]

9. Typical hypocrite

He was no doubt a degenerate himself, like his friend Hoover - except Anslinger looks like the kind given to underage girls.

A perfect fit for the Trump administration.

[dchill]

11. A homicidal leech.

[peppertree]

13. +1

And thus the ideal GOPee bureaucrat.

They want the kind of people the Gestapo wanted.

[LeftInTX]

17. He served under: Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy

As head of the Commission of Narcotics.

Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy could have gotten rid of him. He retired in 1962

[a kennedy]

2. Gonna read up on her life......wow.

[hlthe2b]

3. Well done piece. I'd not known the connection with the writer & the Rosenberg children before...

I didn't connect their adoptive last names to the songwriter. An amazing story that reverberates today.

[Historic NY]

10. I forgot about them...they had a rough time

[link:https://www.history.com/news/rosenberg-sons-admit-father-julius-guilty|

[mopinko]

4. a lynch mob.

that's what we need to call that crowd on 1/6.
a lynch mob.

very interesting story. thx.

[burrowowl]

6. Sad

[Pepsidog]

7. Incredible story. Thanks for posting.

[nvme]

8. wow

I am just stunned by that story with so many levels to it

[iluvtennis]

12. The book "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America" gives broader backstory.

It shows lynchings and burnings of black folks in America. Book is compilation of photos (taken by the "spectators&quot of the lynchings and burnings. This is a history that lots of white folks want to deny - but, it happened.

https://www.amazon.com/Without-Sanctuary-Lynching-Photography-America/dp/0944092691

"Many people today, despite the evidence, will not believe don't want to believe that such atrocities happened in America not so very long ago.

These photographs bear witness to . . . an American holocaust." —Congressman John Lewis The Tuskegee Institute records the lynching of 3,436 blacks between 1882 and 1950. This is probably a small percentage of these murders, which were seldom reported, and led to the creation of the NAACP in 1909, an organization dedicated to passing federal anti-lynching laws.

Through all this terror and carnage someone-many times a professional photographer-carried a camera and took pictures of the events. These lynching photographs were often made into postcards and sold as souvenirs to the crowds in attendance.

These images are some of photography's most brutal, surviving to this day so that we may now look back on the terrorism unleashed on America's African-American community and perhaps know our history and ourselves better. The almost one hundred images reproduced here are a testament to the camera's ability to make us remember what we often choose to forget.

[nolabear]

14. What a sad, remarkable story. Thanks for posting.

[BobTheSubgenius]

15. You didn't even have to hear her voice to know she was feeling every word.

Her face expressed it all.

[uponit7771]

18. +1,

[TheRickles]

16. The video has been deleted. ????

[demmiblue]

19. Hmm, I wonder why.

It is still on the CBS site:

https://www.cbsnews.com/live/video/20210424124153-the-story-behind-strange-fruit-takes-hollywood/#x

[TheRickles]

20. Thanks for the link! Looking forward to watching it, regardless of why it was blocked.