Abel Meeropol
American songwriter (1903-1986)
Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 – October 29, 1986) was an American songwriter and poet whose works were published under his pseudonym Lewis Allan. He wrote the poem and musical setting of "Strange Fruit" (1937), which was recorded by Billie Holiday.
Early life and education
Meeropol was born in 1903 to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, New York. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1921 (his classmate Countee Cullen graduated in 1922) and earned a B.A. from City College of New York and an M.A. from Harvard University. Meeropol taught English at DeWitt Clinton for 17 years. During his tenure as a high school teacher, Meeropol taught author and racial justice advocate James Baldwin.
Song writing and poetry
Meeropol wrote the anti-lynching poem "Strange Fruit" (1937), first published as "Bitter Fruit" in a teacher union publication. He later set it to music. The song was recorded and performed by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. Holiday notes in the book Lady Sings the Blues that she co-wrote the music to the song with Meeropol and Sonny White.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abel Meeropol” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.