Strange Fruit, Revisited

Radio Diaries

Radio Diaries & Radiotopia

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2018

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over the past few years, there’s been a movement to tear down the Confederate monuments dotted all over the south. At the same time, there are some new monuments going up. On April 26, the nation’s first lynching memorial will open in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s called the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and it pays tribute to the more than 4,400 black people who were killed by lynch mobs between 1877 and 1950. Visitors will walk underneath more than 800 suspended columns, each representing a county where a lynching occurred.

One of those columns represents a lynching in Marion, Indiana. It’s the lynching that inspired the song, Strange Fruit. And it’s the only known lynching where a person survived. His name was James Cameron. This is his story – and the story of the white residents who witnessed and took part in the events of that day.

This is Strange Fruit.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Radio Diaries and this is Nellie Gillis with producers
0:05.2	Elisa Scarsay and Micah Hazel.
0:07.0	Hey, this is our producer takeover.
0:09.6	Sorry Joe.
0:10.6	Sorry Joe.
0:11.6	Before we start today's show, we wanted to let you know that right now is Radio To
0:17.1	Radio T. So we're going to let you know that right now is radiotopia's annual fundraiser and for the occasion our team wanted to come and tell you a few of the favorite things that we've
0:20.6	heard from the network recently. Micah, you go first.
0:24.0	So I recently listened to the Stoop episode,
0:27.0	Don't Call Me Ante, which is basically breaking down like the word
0:30.7	auntie, I use it all the time, a lot of people of color use it all the time it's like a very endearing term and
0:37.6	This episode really just kind of broke down the ways in which it's actually pretty problematic.
0:45.0	I think something the show just really does well is it takes these just everyday things
0:49.3	in my life or everyday things in black culture and it kind of like flips them on the head a little
0:53.7	bit while also just feeling like a very casual like conversation between friends.
0:58.8	Awesome. How many people in your life do you call auntie? Oh my God. Like pretty much anyone who's nice to me.
1:07.8	How about you, Elisa? So I recently loved this episode. It was a collaboration between two of my favorite
1:13.6	radiotopious shows, Articles of Interest and Wait for it. They did this story
1:17.6	about plus-size clothes that was the perfect combo of personal stories and
1:21.9	really fascinating fashion history that I had never thought
1:24.4	about. I'll never be able to look at those shoulder cutouts on t-shirts the same way.
1:29.1	I heard that episode too and I definitely have shoulder cut-out shirts that I don't know whether I'll ever wear again.
	...

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