Strange Fruit

Ida B. Wells journalistic and advocacy efforts helped reduce the number of lynchings, but horrific practice not fully eliminated until decades later.

In the 1930s, Bronx high school teacher Abel Meeropol (pen name Lewis Allen) wrote the powerful anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit," which Billie Holliday famously sang and recorded -- over the obstruction of her record company.

One of the last lynchings ocurred in Poplarville, Mississppi, in 1959.