10 Apr Strange Fruit, 2015
This past Tuesday, April 7, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Billie Holiday. In 1939 Lady Day recorded her epochal version of Abel Meeropol’s Strange Fruit. Considered too controversial a topic by her producers at Columbia Records, Holiday ended up recording the song for the smaller Commodore label and it turned into a best seller despite a total lack of radio support. It became one of Holiday’s signature songs and a staple of her repertoire for the remaining twenty years of her life.
Seventy-six years later there’s strange fruit demanding our attention again, but this time it’s not hanging from southern trees. It can be found lying on the streets of cities all across this country. Variations of the scenario have been repeated again and again from Oakland (Oscar Grant), to Staten Island (Eric Garner), to Ferguson, MO (Michael Brown), to Cleveland (Tamir Rice), to Sanford, FL (Trayvon Martin). And now, North Charleston, South Carolina.
This time, the entire horrifying scenario of the death of Walter Scott has been captured on video leaving no question as to the actual sequence of events, as opposed to the version of events presented by the police officer(s) involved. Of course, that was also the case with Eric Garner and no indictments were brought against Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who administered the fatal (and outlawed) chokehold, and his fellow officers who failed to deescalate the situation or administer aid to the dying Garner.
Let’s lay it on the line here: Officer Michael Slager shot Walter Scott down like a dog. Officer Michael Slager took the life of Walter Scott for no good reason and with nothing resembling sufficient provocation or reasonable threat to his own safety. In all likelihood, Michael Slager shot Walter Scott to death because he was pissed off and because he figured he could get away with it. That’s murder. And, to their credit, the city of North Charleston and the state of South Carolina have taken rapid and decisive action: They have fired Michael Slager from the police force and charged him with murder.
This action has been taken because there was a brave citizen journalist on hand to witness and record the murder of Walter Scott. If not for the considerable risk taken by that individual we’d probably be right where we were with Mike Brown: Trying to make sense of a tangle of fragmentary and contradictory versions of events, very possibly resulting in doubt sufficient enough to render a grand jury incapable of returning an indictment. Now, with the unequivocal evidence of the Walter Scott murder, one has to wonder once again what really did happen that day last August in Ferguson. Another unarmed black man in retreat. Another unarmed black man dead in the street.
I’ve just got to wonder: What the fuck is going on in this country? Has anything really changed since the days of Strange Fruit and Jim Crow? Is it still the de facto reality that it’s acceptable to kill unarmed black men, black teenagers, and even black children (Tamir Rice was 12 years old) in America? Is the social climate such that the burden of proof lies with the deceased if he’s a black man? Does a black man have to find a way to demonstrate some sort of perpetual assurance to the police or whatever hopped up vigilante he might encounter that he’s not a dangerous, armed criminal in order to avoid being pulled over, frisked, choked or shot dead?
The murder of Walter Scott is an unadulterated outrage, but the time for anger is past. Anger and outrage are legitimate and entirely appropriate responses to such horrifying, shameful wastes of human life and the all too common lack of accountability. But now it’s time for things to change. May that be the legacy of Walter Scott. The man may not have been a saint—who of us is?—but regardless of whatever mistakes he may have made in his life he didn’t deserve to be shot down like a dog. Thankfully, this time someone is going to have to answer for it.
Cue up Strange Fruit. Cue up The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. Make change.
