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Archive 1

Lynching

"he practice of lynching and burning African Americans that was prevalent in the South at the time when it was written."

Would anyone be terribly offended if this was reworded to avoid "prevalent". I don't think anyone can disagree that this practice was far from common, let alone prevalent.


FOLLOW UP to "prevalent" comment posted by unknown user :

I wondered about this, so I checked up on it and made an estimate of how frequently lynchings occurred in a given area. I wasn't sure what to expect, but having done so, I DO think the practice was common / prevalent.

See : http:/upwiki/wikipedia/en/0/00/Lynchings-graph.png

from the article : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States

The song was first published in 1937; lynchings occurred approximately 50 times a year in the 20 year period leading up to that. Other things such as beatings and forcible seizure of firearms also occurred that aren't listed as lynchings, but doubtless contributed to the fear of lynching.

An estimate of how often someone was lynched with a given radius : Figuring the South is roughly 500,000 Sq miles (USA is 3.7 million sq mi; the South is around 1/6th of that, just based on eyeballing a map, and remembering that Alaska is actually double the size of Texas), 50 lynchings/year means 1 lynching/10,000 sq miles/year, solving for radius gives about 60 miles, roughly. Just in case my estimate was conservative, lets figure every 100 miles.

Meaning that ROUGHLY ON AVERAGE every year, if you were living in the South at this time, someone within a 100 mile radius of you would be lynched. Each year.

It seems that this would be a VERY real and constant fear for African-Americans in the South during this time; news of recent lynchings would almost definitely travel over a 100 mile radius, so every year you could expect to hear about someone from a nearby community being lynched. I think it qualifies as "prevalent". If anyone thinks that doesn't qualify as "prevalent" then I guess they could change it, but I don't intend to. Beakdan 15:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

No Original Research 80.254.147.52 13:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I changed the wording. Lynchings were more frequent in earlier decades before the song was written. --Parkwells 18:44, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
about 50 lynchings a year that's about 1 lynching per week!!!! if 'weekly lynchings' is not prevalent - what ever is? 10:03, 17 March 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.89.243.218 (talk)

Lyrics

If this song dates to the '30s, the lyrics are still under copyright, and we can't post them in the article. — BrianSmithson 09:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Moreover, the writer died in '86, which is much less than the required 70 years ago. I'm removing. ABoerma 19:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

However, a subset of the lyrics could be used in context of discussing imagery and inspiration of the song; that should qualify as Fair Use. I'd wait for comments from folks more experienced with copyright law than I am before doing something like that, though. Beakdan 15:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Copyright law is an hobble for minds. The very idea of making the sharing of ideas illegal is abhorrent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.154.160.120 (talk) 11:44, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Photo

Note that the PBS documentry on the song and its author attributes his inspiration to a photo of the lynching of Rubin Stacey (SP?) near Ft. Lauderdale in 1935. The photo can be found here: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USACstrangefruit.htm

I think the photo should be deleted or reduced in size. We don't have to see it to believe the author of the poem might have been disturbed by such an image.--Parkwells 18:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Um, Parkwells should read the page the link provided leads to more carefully. The article there does say the poem was inspired by the same photo this article cites. The photo on the page the above link leads to IS of the Rubin Stacey lynching, but the article there does NOT cite it as the source for the poem.

I completely disagree that the photo should be removed. What happened was a historical fact. We may not be comfortable with the truth that history holds, but it is still the truth, and the only way to truly understand the horror is to see it for one self. I say the photo should stay. It is an integral part of the history of the song. It's not a fairy tale. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.169.178.73 (talk) 19:46, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I also agree that the photo that inspired the poem and became this historically pivitol piece should remain. However, I am slightly disturbed by the cropping of the image. The full, original, image can be found in the recent NPR piece on the anniversary of the lynching here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129025516 (click on image to get full resolution). The reason the crop is disturbing to me is that the full image shows the detail of the smiling people, as well as the women, young teens and children present. The full impact, meaning, and historical accuracy of the photo are reduced by this crop, and the file should be replaced with the one used in the NPR article. As an added benefit to the Wikipedia project, it may be possible to obtain permission from NPR as well, or to find from them who to contact to obtain permission, and so no longer need the fair use justification page. As a Wikin00b, I do not feel confident enough to do the edit myself, both from a technical standpoint and from a protocol standpoint.--~WarrenSensei 15:31, 13 August 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by WarrenSensei (talk • contribs)

The entry provides a link to a source which itself offers no evidence at all that Meeropol even saw the Marion photo, much less was influenced by it. Like Wikipedia, it merely states it as fact with no source. Nicmart (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
There is also a link accompanying the description of the lynching photo to an NPR page. It says, "The photograph helped inspire the poem and song "Strange Fruit" written by Abel Meeropol — and performed around the world by Billie Holiday.” No original source is provided for that claim. Secondary sources with unsupported assertions do not evidence make. If Meeropol said he was motivated by the Marion photo, why doesn’t someone simply provide proof? Is Wikipedia claiming to provide history or unsupported speculations? Nicmart (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Inspiration

It doesn't make sense to include Oscar Wilde's poem about a man on a gallows - yes, it deals with a hanging, but wasn't inspired by the song or Holiday's singing, which it preceded by decades. I'm removing the reference. --Parkwells 18:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

How come there is no mention of "Le Verger du Roi Louis" (King Louis' Fruit Orchard) by Théodore de Banville (published in 1866)? Laurent Lechifflart (talk) 10:56, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Séamus Heaney's poem

Strange Fruit is also one of the poems of Seamus Heaney. There's no article about it yet but a disambiguation page would be needed, I think. --Szipucsu (talk) 10:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Original cover?

Is the cover in the infobox from the original single? It looks a little modern.--May Cause Dizziness (talk) 23:40, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Lyrics revisited

I think the lyrics of the song are probably still under copyright which is why I recently removed them from the article. However, and probably very unusually, they have been printed in an academic journal with permission and with free web access. So, after the discussion here, I shall link to the lyrics from the article. Thincat (talk) 11:23, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

I see that the lyrics are still included in Lynching in the United States. Davidships (talk) 23:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm intrigued as to why the poem was reprinted in the International Journal of Epidemiology - does anyone know the reason? PhilUK (talk) 21:00, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

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"Other versions" section

This section has been withdrawn by Toddst1 [1] whereas notable artists like Jeff Buckley, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Dee Dee Bridgewater, etc. The section was present here in September 2017. Each version is supported by a wp:reliable source and each one of these renditions meet the notability requirement as it is written at WP:COVERSONG. One has to underline that Toddst1 is the one and only user who's constantly reverted this section and this has been going for a long time, [2]. Valboo (talk) 23:28, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

It's not about the artists being notable. WP:COVERSONG is about the notability of the artists' version. Toddst1 (talk) 14:00, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
These versions are notable: it is only in Toddst1's mind they are not. His edit to erase these renditions, was arbitrary Valboo (talk) 16:14, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
To be fair, all edits are arbitrary. You can disagree that you think each of those renditions were sufficiently notable to be included. However, there are a lot of articles, including this one, that have been bloated with non-notable versions and padded with sources that merely state that the versions exist - which is why @BrightR: added the {{refex}} tag to this article. Toddst1 (talk) 16:49, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

responding to ping: Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. The article has to be "encyclopedic"; what exactly this means is hard to define, but it's very easy to see whether or not a secondary or tertiary source mention the significance of these examples. By consensus, examples such as these cannot rely on their mere existence as a valid reason to be included, a secondary or tertiary source needs to mention why they're significant in the context of the article. Please note that this is not a notability issue ("notability guidelines do not apply to content within an article"), it's a due weight and verifiability issue, as explained by the template which is based on a WP:V RfC that was near-unanimously accepted.

TL;DR: there is little to no doubt the examples exist, but these examples should be meaningful in the context of the article, according to reliable sources. Ideally, there should be prose that explains why they are meaningful. Bright☀ 12:07, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

I concur with what Bright wrote. Some of the previous sources didn't fit in for this article, I found better sources and added quotes. Kempsir (talk) 19:06, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
As do I. Toddst1 (talk) 18:45, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
New try from @Toddst1: but as they don't have any wp:consensus, back to the the previous version. -- Kempsir (talk) 00:43, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
There's no consensus for your position either but a good principle to follow in situations like this is I'd rather allow little minds a big victory. Toddst1 (talk) 02:41, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Covers

I don't think the article is supposed to replicate a Google search - this list is getting very long, and most entries are without sources. Those can all be deleted. What's the point? Makes it trivial - yes, the song has been recorded by many people.Parkwells (talk) 12:41, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

From my perspective, a listing of some of the most famous/influential covers would be worthwhile (in my case, I really value the fact that UB40's cover is listed, since that is how I first got to know the song. DrArsenal (talk) 21:43, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
WP:COVERSONG should guide here. Toddst1 (talk) 16:51, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
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