Strange Fruit

In her hit song Strange Fruit,  the late Billy Holiday described how thousands of innocent black men were lynched in the rural South for decades on trumped-up charges.  She said their bodies dangled from the poplar tree while their eyes bulged from their heads in the hot sun.  Lynching continues today, as evidenced by stand-your-ground laws and racial profiling of minorities, like the Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis murder trials in Florida. For instance, when the perpetrator is white and the victim black, stand-your-ground is often entered as a defense, with the accused getting off scot-free or with a slap on the wrist even if the evidence is stacked against them.  The U.S. Justice Department, headed by a black man,  and the right-wing United States Supreme Court need to take immediate action to strike down such unfair statutes or racial codes by upholding the Constitution.  If not,  we will soon witness urban riots on a scale not seen since the 1960s.