50 years ago today an attempt to cross a bridge in Alabama in a peaceful civil rights march ended in “Bloody Sunday”
In the beginning of 1965, civil rights activists organized the three protest marches to walk the 54-mile highway from Selma to the Alabama state capital of Montgomery to show the desire of black American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression.
…in no particular order & with my favorite recording…
Number Seven: Billie Holiday
How one song she sang embodied racial crimes in America: “Strange Fruit”.
Billie Holiday performs at the Downbeat club in New York, 1947 – Photograph by William Gottlieb
Billie Holiday hardly needs introducing and I want to concentrate on one song in particular: “Strange Fruit” (click on link to see rare live performance). Her haunting voice sets the tone and serves as a powerful tool of protest and accusation.
Dutch writer Marga Minco tells a story of great sorrow in an understated and powerful way.
The Maror (bitter herb) which symbolises the hard life endured by the Israelites while in Egyptian bondage. Illustration from the Golden Haggadah at the British Library.
Marga Minco’s books are distinguished by, and celebrated for, her sober, reserved way of using words and emotions. Her restrained style and cinematic turn of phrase give her books great power. Every school child in Holland reads her book “Bitter Herbs” (original title: “Het Bittere Kruid”).
How the high waisted pant has made a comeback AT LAST!
Yves Saint Laurent, photograph by Helmut Newton – 1975
How a young girl’s diary became an everlasting condemnation of the Holocaust.
Anne Frank, 12 June 1929 – early March 1945
Anne Frank is alive; she lives on in all of us….The writer Primo Levi describes this beautifully: “One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live.”
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