Today, April 7, is the birthday of the innovative African American, social activist, jazz and swing music singer Eleanora Fagan (April 7 1915 – July 17, 1955.) She was known professionally as Billie Holiday. After a troubled life, Holiday died handcuffed to a hospital bed. Posthumously, she won four Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. At the end of her show each night, the lights would go down, all movement and chatter stopped, and Holiday would sing the piece called " Strange Fruit. " In 1999, Time magazine declared that song “song of the century.” The song was originally written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish school teacher, poet, and activist from New York City. A photograph of a lynching in Indiana some years earlier had deeply disturbed Meeropol, inspiring him to write “Strange Fruit,” and the song eventually made its way to the Greenwich Village nightclub where Holiday sang. The lyrics of "Stra...