The Jena Six: "Southern Trees Bear Strange Fruit"
by Kelly Vásquez
USA
I have always been deeply affected and influenced by music. Depending on my mood, I happily switch between drastically varying genres, but from age six when I first heard Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong deftly banter back and forth at one another, I was hooked on jazz.
• A vintage sign from America's past. Photograph courtesy of The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia •
Southern trees bear 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.
