Please write a blog post reflecting on the readings or the week and the documentary Strange Fruit. You can decide what direction to take it. A few ideas:
-refer back to David King Dunaways article Music and Politics in the United States. Apply the typologies to the song Strange Fruit. What difference does this song make to the politics and law of the time?
-discuss the history of federal anti-lynching legislation (this will require some research on top of what is found in the documentary).
-consider how history could have been different if black songs were not chronicled by people like Lomax and Gellert. Would the politics and laws of the time have been different? How? Why?
-is it problematic that those chronicling the music were white when the music was created by blacks? Why or why not? What about the fact that the author of Strange Fruit was a white, Jewish man?
-is Stange Fruit a political/legal song? Why or why not? (this only works if you situate your answer in the readings!)
Or come up with another idea that interests you
https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/strange-fruit
https://www.pbs.org/americanrootsmusic/pbs_arm_oralh_alanlomax.html
https://theconversation.com/lead-bellys-music-defied-racial-categorization-38462