Lynching

Strange Fruit

by Boris Gorelick

While Gorelick’s lithograph shares its title with Lewis Allen’s famous song, Gorelick’s inspiration actually came from a specific newspaper story he read: a young black man was seized from his house by a group of white men lead by the local sheriff, then dragged to the jailhouse and given to a mob of Klansmen. 

The man was lynched on a nearby tree, and later discovered by his wife.  Gorelick’s abstracted lithograph was meant as “a personal statement of outrage and protest” at this event.