Key Information Concerning His Life & Poetry
Abel Meeropol is better known under his pseudonym Lewis Allan (names of his two stillborn children). Meeropol was an anti-racism activist and went about showing his detestation of racism through his poetry. His most popular poem was called “Strange Fruit”. It is a haunting melody about racism which he was inspired to write because he once saw a photograph of the lynching of two mutilated black African-American men (in Marion, Indiana). The two men had done a foul crime and murdered a white American man and raped his girlfriend. But instead of being sentenced to prison, they had instead by hung and battered with a sledgehammer until they died. This photo had haunted him for a very long time and it prompted him to expose the racism that still existed in American society (1937). This was the start of his main hatred towards racism and it is what inspired him to write “Strange Fruit”. Meeropol himself had even said, "I wrote "Strange Fruit" because I hate lynching, and I hate injustice, and I hate the people who perpetuate it." His works had grown even more in popularity because multiple of his poems were later sung in onstage performances; the first being "Strange Fruit" by Bille Holiday (first time was in 1939). In fact Time Magazine has even named, "Strange Fruit" the song of the century. Thus began his literary works involving racism and civil rights.