Strange Fruit: A protest song with enduring relevance. [View all]

[dipsydoodle]

First recorded in 1939, the protest song Strange Fruit came to symbolise the brutality and racism of the practice of lynching in America's South. Now, more than seventy years later, such is the song's enduring power that rapper Kanye West sampled the track on his latest album Yeezus.

"The smell of the honeysuckle brings all of it back. That's the smell prevalent in the area we lived in. The honeysuckle was in bloom.

"Because words can't describe how we felt that night, how I felt. It was a combination of grief, shock, fear.

"You have a sorrow that grips you for what happened to Emmett."

Simeon Wright, now in his seventies, is recalling the August night in 1955 in Mississippi when his 14-year-old cousin Emmett Till was dragged out of the bed they were sharing at Simeon's house.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25034438