“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.