“Strange Fruit” by jazz singer Billie Holiday — with a voice and phrasing like no other — conveys the horror and tragedy of racial lynching.
On Friday it was sung by Pastor Armon Lowery of Newberry’s Mount Zura Full Gospel Baptist Church under a live oak from which people were lynched, and the imagery of the song became real in a way like no other.
It was one of many wrenching moments in a soil collection ceremony in honor of the Newberry Six — a group of African Americans lynched here more than a century ago — as part of a city and countywide truth and reconciliation effort to come to terms with an ugly history.