Josh White also did a powerful version of Strange Fruit.

Something that always bothered me about the song though, is that it refers only to the south. While I would never try to argue that the south wasn't the scene of the MAJORITY of lynchings of blacks, it has always irritated the hell out of me to hear people from other parts of the U.S. and elsewhere refer to it like it was the ONLY place the atrocities happened. I've lived all over the south, in quite a few places in the northern U.S., in Japan and in Canada and EVERY ONE OF THEM has a history of this kind of thing.

When I was in university I got a book on the history of the Ku Klux Klan and was surprised to find that the state with the largest chapter in the U.S. was Ohio. It was also very strong in Oregan and for a while was very strong in south-central Ontario.

The point of this rant is: You can't regionalize bigotry — it's everywhere!

david