Until last week I didn’t know who Hayley Williams was or that she is the lead singer of Paramore, a rock band I’ve heard of but don’t listen to.
Hayley Williams and I share some crucial things, I have discovered.
Like me, Williams is a White Southerner who grew up attending a White church and knows parts of American history that a lot of us Southern Whites (and many White Americans) were not taught in school. She also is a skeptic of the dominant form of Christianity in our native South (or at least the dominant form of Christianity as perceived by politicians and the national media).
I thought a lot about all of this as I listened to “True Believer,” her new song that dropped on social media platforms and then on streaming services last week. It is about Southern White culture and certain types of American Christianity.
To say I felt as if I have found one of my own — that is, White Southerners who can’t shake faith from their lives while at the same time view many forms of American Christianity through jaundiced, angry eyes — is an understatement.
About halfway through the song, Williams sings these words:
“They say that Jesus is the way but then they gave him a white face
“So that they don’t have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them
“The South will not rise again
“ ‘Til it’s paid for every sin
“Strange fruit, hard bargain
“Till the roots, Southern Gotham”
Also like me, Hayley Williams says stuff out loud that many White Southerners (and many White Americans) are quiet about.
I, too, have wondered why a portrait of a White Jesus hangs in most White Churches across the country when Jesus was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jewish rabbi.
I mused about this in a column last year in which I wrote “So what” to all the people around the globe who were angry that drag queens were re-enacting the Last Supper during the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games.
I’m still not sure that’s what was going on. But even if it were, countless communities across the globe over the last 19 centuries have depicted Jesus and his disciples in their own image, I wrote. (Click on this link or read the book The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America if you’re skeptical.)
If they wouldn’t cop to making Jesus White, I wrote, I expected to see all the paintings and illustrations of “White Jesus” disappearing from White churches across the land as the realization takes hold that we’ve all been worshiping our own image instead of that of a 1st century Jewish rabbi’s.
I noticed something else as “True Believer” made the rounds on social media platforms. It was the many commenters who posted some version of “thank you” for the powerful lyrics accompanied by a confession: They didn’t understand the reference to “Strange Fruit” and had to look it up.
“Strange Fruit,” as you might know, refers to a song made famous by the legendary Billie Holiday in 1939 that protested the lynching of African Americans, a commonplace practice in the South at the time that happened in other parts of the country, too.
“Strange Fruit” began as a poem titled “Bitter Fruit” by Abel Meeropol, a son of Russian Jewish immigrants. It has been suggested Meeropol wrote it after seeing a photo of the lynching of two African American teenagers — Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith — in Indiana that happened Aug. 7, 1930, 95 years ago this week.
Holiday began performing “Strange Fruit” at her shows but eventually recorded it in 1939 over the protests of her record label. Despite radio stations in the South refusing to play it, Strange Fruit became a hit even as it angered many around the country. Until she died in 1959, Holiday was harassed by the federal government in part because of her performances of “Strange Fruit.”
“Strange Fruit’s” lyrics can still shock more than 80 years after Billie Holiday made them famous:
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit/ Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/ Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze/ Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees …”
Wrestling with our country’s very messy history is not easy, nor should it be. It holds up a mirror to ourselves, leaving all of us all to ask, Do we learn from our history or just brush it under the rug?
I am thankful that Hayley Williams’ song helped some curious folks educate themselves on parts of our nation’s history that I feel we don’t talk about enough.
Trip Jennings started his career in Georgia at his hometown newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle, before working at newspapers in California, Florida and Connecticut. Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican. He holds a Master’s of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. In 2012, he co-founded New Mexico In Depth.