Month: April 2016

Jack Roosevelt Robinson rose from humble origins to cross baseball’s color line and become one of the most beloved men in America. A fierce integrationist, Robinson used his immense fame to speak out against the discrimination he saw on and off the field, angering fans, the press, and even teammates who had once celebrated him for “turning the other cheek.” After baseball, he was a widely-read newspaper columnist, divisive political activist and tireless advocate for civil rights, who later struggled to remain relevant as diabetes crippled his body and a new generation of leaders set a more militant course for the civil rights movement.

JACKIE ROBINSON, a two-part, four-hour film directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon tells the story of an American icon whose life-long battle for first class citizenship for all African Americans transcends even his remarkable athletic achievements. “Jackie Robinson,” Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “was a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.”

 

“The shocking story of APPROVED KILLING IN MISSISSIPPI” 

This article is the infamous confession of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant to the kidnapping and killing of Emmett Till. Reporter William Bradford Huie reportedly paid the men $4,000 for their story. It appeared in Look Magazine January 24, 1956: 46–50. 

The man behind “Strange Fruit” is  Abel Meeropol, a poet and a social activist. In the 1930s Meerpol “was very disturbed at the continuation of racism in America, and seeing a photograph of a lynching sort of put him over the edge.” When Holiday decided to sing “Strange Fruit,” the song reached millions of people.

 

Southern trees bear a 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 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.