An Open Letter to the Rosenberg Son

Front Page Magazine ^ | 6/18/03 | Ronald Radosh

[thegreatbeast]

No, you are right. It is a beautiful song but it was largely appropriated by the Left to show how heartless American capitalism is. It was the only song the guy Meerpol had any real success with.

[caspera]

You're right. It did happen.

Lynchings: By Year and Race
Year	Whites	Blacks	Total
1882	64	49	113
1883	77	53	130
1884	160	51	211
1885	110	74	184
1886	64	74	138
1887	50	70	120
1888	68	69	137
1889	76	94	170
1890	11	85	96
1891	71	113	184
1892	69	161	230
1893	34	118	152
1894	58	134	192
1895	66	113	179
1896	45	78	123
1897	35	123	158
1898	19	101	120
1899	21	85	106
1900	9	106	115
1901	25	105	130
1902	7	85	92
1903	15	84	99
1904	7	76	83
1905	5	57	62
1906	3	62	65
1907	3	58	61
1908	8	89	97
1909	13	69	82
1910	9	67	76
1911	7	60	67
1912	2	62	64
1913	1	51	52
1914	4	51	55
1915	13	56	69
1916	4	50	54
1917	2	36	38
1918	4	60	64
1919	7	76	83
1920	8	53	61
1921	5	59	64
1922	6	51	57
1923	4	29	33
1924	0	16	16
1925	0	17	17
1926	7	23	30
1927	0	16	16
1928	1	10	11
1929	3	7	10
1930	1	20	21
1931	1	12	13
1932	2	6	8
1933	2	24	28
1934	0	15	15
1935	2	18	20
1936	0	8	8
1937	0	8	8
1938	0	6	6
1939	1	2	3
1940	1	4	5

As of 1939 when the song was written, lynching was on the wane, yet still relevant. I would hate to think that outrage about lynching was exclusively a left-wing phenomenon.

[Katya]

"Radosh is an exceptional man. He was groomed and nurtured in the same sort of environment as the Rosenbergs but he was smart and moral enough to eventually learn to value the real America instead of trying to destroy it. "

Very true....for anyone interested his beginnings and seeds of doubt are retold in his non-fiction book Commies.

[DPB101]

The lyrics were designed to create a stereotype of the South. Blacks lynched from every tree. One the left continues to this day (while not mentioning that black on black crime has killed more blacks in the last decade than Jim Crow ever did).Leon Trotsky.On Black Nationalism (1934)

It is necessary to teach the American beasts. It is necessary to make them understand that the American state is not their state and that they do not have to be the guardians of this state . . .

The Negro has not yet got it into his poor black head that he dares to carve out for himself a piece of the great and mighty States . . .

It is then possible that the Negroes will become the most advanced section. We hate already a similar example in Russia. The Russians were the European Negroes.

It is very possible that the Negroes also through the self-determination will proceed to the proletarian dictatorship in a couple of gigantic strides, ahead of the great bloc of white workers. They will then furnish the vanguard. I am absolutely sure that they will in any case fight better than the white workers.

Trotsky was so stupid, he thought American blacks spoke their own language.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Interestingly, my husband has a doctorate in music; he has taught college-level music history and is an accomplished jazz musician. I mentioned this to him tonight, and he was as surprised as I was that "Strange Fruit" had been interpreted here as a "communist anthem". (He's a conservative, incidentally.)

How, specifically, did the Left "appropriate" the song? I'm sincerely curious.

[Revolting cat!]

Strange fruit may be about lynching and not about Coommunism, (gee, we're not stupid!) but it is and has been a Communist anthem. And that's how they manage to fools some of us most of the time, I might add! (Hand wringing about "Racism" is what unites the extreme Right and the extreme Left in this country. Run for the hills, I say!) And even if it were only a pop Tin Pan Alley hit tune about lynching that would be quite pathetic, doncha think?

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

The lyrics were designed to create a stereotype of the South. Blacks lynched from every tree.

Well, there were a significant number of lynchings, weren't there? The South was not a friendly place for black Americans, was it? (Or have I been buying into some leftist propaganda?)

I appreciate the information - don't get me wrong - I just don't see the proof that the song was "intended" to do anything but describe, in poetic terms, something that took place.

The writer was a communist, but I don't see any call to action in the lyrics, do you?

(By the way, I am as anti-communist as they come, but I must say this is a brilliant piece of music.)

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

As of 1939 when the song was written, lynching was on the wane, yet still relevant. I would hate to think that outrage about lynching was exclusively a left-wing phenomenon.

Agreed. Thank you for the informative post.

[thegreatbeast]

As I said in my earlier post I saw a documentary on the song itself and its history. It was half about Billie Holiday and half about the Rosenberg's adopted father. He was a NYC teacher, a committed red, a literary whirlwind within that circle and the author of 'Strange Fruit'.
As I said I find the song as beautiful and mournful as anybody else. No question about it being a classic of its type. (Incidentally, there was a famous novel of that name that I used to have from that time which probably was the inspiration for the song.) But it was written by a Jewish communist from NYC who had probably never been south of Hoboken. It was written for a play that the Red Brigades (my term & usage here) were putting on within their own red communists teachers union milieu.
Do a little searching around and you'll find this documentary. I saw it very recently on one of the communist stations: Bravo, IFC or Sundance. ;^)

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

I will look for that, thanks! Fascinating stuff. (I didn't know that it had been written for a play.)

[liberallarry]

good article. thanks for the ping

[DPB101]

No coincidence that just as lynching were becoming rather rare a communist wrote a song about blacks hanging from every tree in the South. The MO is always the same. The intent is always the same. Meeropol didn't care that blacks were lynched. He was on Trotsky's side. He knew about Stalin's purges. He knew about 7 million murdered in the Ukraine between 1930 and 1933. He knew about the horrors under War Communism a decade before that (3 to 10 million murdered then). The blacks were "beasts" to be used to bring about a proletarian revolution. A couple dozen blacks hanged? Why would a man who didn't mind 30 million deaths, care about that?

[Deb]

So what? Why do you think anyone cares about where you grew up? And what does that have to do with what I said? I didn't say blacks were carrried around on silk pillows. I said American Communists used their plight to try to provoke a revoltion.

Good Lord, what does you growing up in Florida have to do with anything? Get over yourself.

[DPB101]

It is a good article. Puts a human face on Robert. I felt sorry for him when I read it. David Horowitz wrote in Radical Son how his father was near suicide once. He wanted to leave the CPUSA. But it was his life. All his friends were there. Without it, he would kill himself. Think that is were Robert is.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

I've been doing a little digging because of thegreatbeast's suggestion, and I'm finding out a lot. Thanks again for the information. (One book review of a book that was written on the topic said that he learned of the lynchings of two men in a union newsletter he received, and it inspired him to write the song - whether that's true or not, I obviously couldn't say...the site was one of those screwball "struggling workers" pages.)

[DPB101]

The commies wrote some good songs. Always for a good cause too--peace, land, bread. Stop the lynchings! No blood for oil! Their hearts were/are black is all.

If I had the talent and decided to use it to help people suffering, I would not write a song about how everyone wanted to hang them from trees. I would write something hopeful, tell them the odds were not stacked against them, that they could make it.

Liberals never do that. It is always about oppression and the cult of the victim (while making criminals into heros).

[js1138]

If it took communists to bring about this change, shame on us. It's really stupid to give your enemies bullets.

[Deb]

Yeah, whatever.

Try to focus.

The man said, "Strange Fruit" was a Communist anthem. He was right. Period.

You must drive your family nuts.

[drhogan]

i like the song and recently bought a cd of it after seeing the pbs documentary. the song is really good; lynching was really evil; the song was written by a committed communist who probably truly believed that he was helping blacks through his communist activities, and who was probably sincerely horrified by lynching. Stalin, Trotsky, and Lenin were evil manipulators. but average rank-and-file communists often believe in what they are doing. (I used to be one, and I knew many, many communists in the '60's.)
communists often wrote things to attack weak points of the capitalist system (e.g., southern racism; unpopular wars). the lyrics (or books or movie scripts) don't have to call for revolution--they just point out some really bad aspect of the capitalist system. then the communists organize a front group to fight that specific issue (e.g., the war in Iraq), and gradually recruit (noncommunist, and often naive) members of the front group (who don't even know it is a front group) into deeper communist involvement. the song "strange fruit" is a good example of this process.

[drhogan]

having been a communist, and knowing how they operate, I suspect that strange fruit was consciously part of a communist plan to organize around the issue of southern racism. the writer probably sincerely believed he was helping blacks by doing this and by promoting communism. Communists differentiate between the "mass line", i.e., what you say to the workers you are trying to organize (e.g., racism is bad, lynching is bad) and "party line" i.e., what you tell party members (only a communist revolution can end racism and lynchings).
Even a beautiful song like strange fruit can thus be part of a long-term plan.
this doesn't make the song bad; but even a beautiful song with lyrics that we can appreciate, and which denounces a true evil like lynching, can at the same time be part of a sinister communist operation. there are many levels in political processes.