“Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, for the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, for the sun to rot, for a tree to drop. Here is a strange and bitter crop.” -Abel Meeropol
Poet and songwriter Abel Meeropol wrote that lament after seeing a photograph of two black teenagers hanging from a tree, after being lynched in Marion, Indiana, on August 7, 1930. Meeropol’s song, “Strange Fruit” was later made famous by Billie Holiday. A secret, missing from the photograph, is that a third black boy was supposed to die that fateful day. James Cameron is believed to be the only African American to have survived a lynching. This is his story. And this is also the story of the white residents of Marion, Indiana who witnessed or took part in the fateful events of August 7, 1930. In the 1970’s, some of their memories were recorded on cassette tapes, put in a box, and then forgotten for decades. Those cassettes were found in a basement a few years back, and you’ll hear them throughout our story.
