Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here’s a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here’s a strange and bitter crop

There’s nothing new under the sun, both positive and negative. Cycles can be good or bad. We prefer that the good cycles continue while bad ones must be broken.

Unfortunately, we are seeing many of the bad cycles coming back into the forefront of our society. 

The song Strange Fruit was originally written as a poem penned by Abel Meeropol in 1937 and later put to music and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. 

Up until 1939, Tuskegee Institute had tracked approximately 4,689 lynchings since collecting data began in 1882, 5 years following the onset of Jim Crow legislation.

There were between 1 and 5 lynchings recorded per year between 1939 and 1949. However, those numbers can be misleading, as many racially motivated killings during the mid-20^th century went unrecorded or unclassified as such.  

And now, here in 2026, we’ve been presented with 7 lynchings in less than a year, 6 within the last 7 months. So far, they have all been classified as “no foul play indicated.”

According to this, Black folks are now hanging themselves.

1. Trey Reed, age 21, hung from a tree on the campus of Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss., on Sept. 15
2. Kyle Bassinga, age 21, hung from a tree in a wooded area in Fair Oaks Park in Cobb County, GA on Feb. 18
3. Juliana Umba Nzita, age 16, hung on church grounds in Charlotte, NC on May 8
4. Tonea Nicole Miller, age 27, hung on June 18 at Gwen Cherry Park in Miami, FL while there to celebrate Juneteenth
5. Jerard Jackson, age 28, hung in a wooded area near Rothbury, MI on June 30
6. Syriah Henderson, age 29, hung behind a Dollar Tree in St. Petersburg, Florida, on July 1
7. Tasia Fortune, age 29, hung behind a vacant house, high in a tree in Jackson, Miss., on Aug. 3

Not to mention the ongoing case of 19-year-old Nolan Wells, which is still under investigation, but so far, no foul play is being suspected.    

This is reminiscent of the list of deaths posted at the end of the movie “Cry Freedom,” where the deaths of incarcerated men, women, and children in South Africa, who protested Apartheid, were classified as suicides.

There have been over 70 suspected lynchings between 2000 and 2025, compiled by the Equal Justice Initiative and the JULIAN organization.

We’ve seen this movie before; we just seem to be repeating the cycle.

Prosecution for these murders rarely, if ever, took place, and we see a continuation of that disturbing pattern. Justice has often been reserved for people classified as “white” while being denied to people of color (POC). Instead of being justice for all, it’s been the case of “just us.”    

It’s the history of America’s institutionalized system of deeming POC as second-class citizens, and there seems to be a segment of America that still clings to this belief system and that this is what will make America great again.

We are in a cycle that appears unbreakable; it’s like a bad case of déjà vu; we’ve been here before. We’ve seen this before. It’s hate run amok in the name of freedom. It’s the Chud the Builder race baiting strangers, in an attempt to provoke them, giving himself a reason to shoot someone of color.

The rocks they have been hiding under have been kicked over during these last two years, and the slimy insects have come slithering out in droves to make America great in their eyes.

ICE is blatantly abducting people off the streets with or without them being citizens. They have separated families and even killed residents without consequences.

The Epstein files (Pedo-files) are being covered up, “allegedly,” to protect the wealthy and powerful.

It’s all “giving” a time when families were sold away to other plantations, when slave catchers hunted down people seeking freedom, and Black folks were hung from trees like Christmas ornaments.

So how do we break this ungodly cycle? How do we truly make America great and see a nation we have never seen before?

It starts with reengineering those components which created the cycle in the first place.

We have to revise our educational system to be inclusive of contributors to the advancement of society across ethnic lines and actually give credit to whom credit is due, as opposed to making a concerted effort to only feature those of the homogeneous population, AKA “white” folks. Such omissions in history give the impression that one “racial” classification is superior to all others and that this one group is solely responsible for anything of value.

We have to become more inclusive in our media representations of greater diversity and seeing people of color in positions of authority as opposed to being relegated to stereotypical images. The movie “Hollywood Shuffle” took on this issue.

And we must allow our children to be free from racialized conditioning and have them interact with children and adults who look different than they do. This will then simply become normalized, and they will learn to simply see people as people and as individuals and judge them accordingly.

While we have made some strides in the last two arenas of media representation and more integrated relationships being portrayed in media. And more of our children are gaining more integrated exposure and developing relationships outside of their own ethnicities, we still need a lot of work on our educational system.

Fortunately, we are seeing more allies making themselves known and courageously speaking truth to power to take on this system of systemic institutionalized racism/white supremacy. But the fight is far from over; we must realize that we are stronger together and that ignorance is our enemy.