1930s

Louis Armstrong – I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead (You Rascal You) (1931)

Armstrong was a Black musician in Jim Crow America, and with this came dealings with the police. This song is about a run-in with the Memphis Police when they threw him and his band in jail. As a condition of his release, Armstrong agreed to play a benefit concert, and when it came time to play “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead (You Rascal You),” Armstrong dedicated the performance to the Memphis Police Department.

Ethel Waters – Suppertime (1933)

“Suppertime” is from the musical As Thousands Cheer, by Irving Berlin. Performed by the great Ethel Waters, the song tells of a wife who has just heard learned that her husband has been lynched. Waters’s gut wrenching performance was meant to express what many Black families experienced—losing loved ones to systemic racial violence in Jim Crow America.

Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit (1939)

Many believe that “Strange Fruit” was the song that destroyed Billie Holiday’s career. Written by Abel Meeropol, the tune protests the many lynchings of Black people in the South. The words ‘strange fruit’ refer to humans hung from trees. The song was not received well, especially as many patrons of jazz clubs were white, and some of them were FBI agents who framed Holiday for narcotics possession when she refused to stop performing “Strange Fruit”. Regardless of its backlash, the song has been deemed a “song of the century,” as well as one of the catalysts of the Civil Rights Movement.