I just saw most of a show on educational television about "Miss Lil's Camp", which I'd never heard of. Indeed, if I'd ever heard her name I'd forgotten it. Here is a link to a site about her, if anyone is interested.
The show featured four now-old ladies, former campers, who all spoke of Miss Smith with passion and near-reverence, for her ability to influence the girls enough to teach them to think, to establish their own values, and to be assertive in sticking to them. Very unusual for the era.
Now--the reason that made me think of posting about her here: she wrote the book Strange Fruit, and during the show they played some old interviews with her, in one of which she said she didn't know how the term got to be associated with lynchings, but that that wasn't her intended meaning. She said she had used the term prior to the book in an essay, and what she meant was that the white people of the segregationist South were the strange fruit born of that social custom.
I just thought it was interesting to hear the author of a term refute the "common" meaning it had taken on.

Thank you for this many layered link Jackie, which provides a lot about American history. I know so little about it.

The poem about lynching was first published in 1937 and Billie Holliday first sang and recorded it in 1939 and recorded it again in 1944. While Smith could have used it differently in an essay prior to her 1944 book, it seems odd that she wouldn't "know" how the term became associated with lynchings.

Never heard that song before. Found a good version on YouTube.
Dating from when Billy Holliday was still rather young.
Impressive but very heartbraking. Still have an old LP with her songs. None of them are really cheering you up much, but it's strong; it's still beautiful.

Only now I understand the connection between Strange Fruit and the lynching. I was going to ask but thanks, the song makes it clear.

Oh, really? Huh--I knew there'd been the song, but didn't think of checking/comparing dates. Thanks!

I guess thats why they call it "The Blues"
Meeropols poem would have been less sucessful in any other musical genre as the music also stems from the slavery era and prior.

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Aye...yes Olly, the blues allright.
Only this is a darker shade of blue.
There is a sober, earlier interpretation.
In the later ones her personal tragic way down seeps
through, making it harder to listen to.(I think)
Strange Fruit (search YouTube)