Southern Trees Bear Strange Fruit

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh

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

Strange Fruit-composed by Abel Meeropol and first sung by Billie Holliday and her orchestra in 1939

Those lyrics haunt me! And here we are again. Rather, we have never left this rancid space in Amerikkka.

But lately under the Donald Trump regime, I cannot keep up with the number of suspicious deaths of Black people in the South.

Here’s a story, that I actually filed last week covering Nolan Wells’ unsolved death-the hanging from a tree death of Tasia Fortune. I also reported on fifteen year old Khloe McDonel, who was found fatally shot in the head. I also reviewed the hanging from tree deaths of Mississippi Delta State University student Trey Reed as well as Cory Zukatis, a houseless man whose body was found within hours of Reed’s.

The Mississippi State Medical Examiner, Dr. Staci Turner, ruled both of those men’s deaths suicides-but Reed’s family dispute her findings, even though his girlfriend claimed that Reed was suicidal the night before his death.

We are still waiting on the Mississippi State medical examiner to release results from Nolan Wells autopsy that Office is telling me that they will not release those results pending a grand jury investigation into the case. All of these deaths are just in Mississippi.

Mississippi, by the way, leads the south in number of modern day lynchings, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that Black people are also disappearing and dying by hanging frequently from trees in other southern states.

Then there’s the case of sixteen year old Juliana Nzita of Charlotte, NC whose body was found hanging from a tree by a ratchet strap-her feet touching the ground. A man walking his dog discovered her body outside of a church. Within days, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department had turned the case over to the DA’s office, where the case was closed and her death was ruled a suicide.

Juliana, whose family emigrated from the Congo, was described by family members as “warm and sweet.”

My job is to be a journalist and to follow the facts. Could some of these be suicide? Yes. highly unlikely that all of them are and with the horrid and chilling history of the south and the Ku Klux Klan- it is very difficult to not wonder if Black America are not being hunted.

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Especially in Donald Trump’s white supremacist America. Trump has emboldened and encouraged the darkest urges of his followers.

We have jackboot Gestapo on the streets, pretending to be “immigration enforcers” when we all know that’s not what’s happening at all.

This is an administration of racist, white nationalists- eager to whitewash this nation into Stephen Miller’s creepy dystopia.

I know that racism and lynchings never disappeared but under Donald Trump’s authoritarian vision and with the blessing of Republican lemmings- we are now seeing murders happen in public and being told it was all “in the name of law and order.”

So we cannot sleep on the South- we need to be the watchers on the wall for our brothers and sisters of color. Nearly 60% of Black Americans live in the South-so we don’t abandon them-we link arms and step in.

Let’s invest in candidates running for Southern state houses- they are the ones who will be the firewall and the bulwark against white supremacy and gerrymandering which is how white minorities take control of Black majorities.

Click on this link for Y’all Vote for the South and please take a few dollars-yes I know we’re all broke but this is worth it- and invest in southern candidates. Your information is private and your donation goes directly to the candidates. It helps them put door knockers up, road signs, and man phone banks to flip southern state legislatures blue. And that helps all of us.

This is how we protect our brothers and sisters as well as protect our democracy.