18-year-old American Idol contestant Douglas Mills, from Houston, Tex., stunned the show’s judges with his soul-stirring rendition of the iconic song, “Strange Fruit.”
During the second round of auditions, Mills beautifully sang the track, originally performed by Billie Holiday in 1939, which shocked panel judges Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan, and Katy Perry. The audition aired on March 20 and has garnered over a million views on YouTube thus far.
“Young man, that was superb,” Richie said about Mills’ performance. “You’re a superstar,” added Perry. “You transcend Time and space. You froze the room. That was iconic.”
During a pre-recorded interview, the teen described music as his “safe place” from the racist bullying he endured growing up. “When I was younger, I was bullied because I look different,” he explained. “I’ve been called ‘gorilla,’ ‘King Kong.’ People said, ‘You can’t be that person that you wanna be.’ Still, today, it’s hard for me to love myself. It was very painful for me, but music helped me out. Music is my life. Basically, It’s my safe place from doubters and haters. And people who just don’t like me in general.”
The uber-talented high school student said he chose to sing “Strange Fruit” as an ode to the Black community’s seemingly neverending struggle with racism, brutality and white supremacy.
“I picked this song for the Black community because they have gone through so much pain over the past few centuries. It’s time to bring awareness to it,” Mills told American Idol.
The original recording by Holiday first debuted at West 4th’s Cafe Society in NYC. The song was an adaptation of a poem by Bronx-born Jewish communist teacher and civil rights activist Abel Meeropol, who saw a 1930 photo of two lynched Black teens in Indiana; J. Thomas Shipp, 18, and Abraham S. Smith, 16. However, the legendary Jazz singer and civil rights activist reportedly chose to breathe new life into it as a Black woman who was hyper-aware of the heinous crime committed against African Americans in the U.S. for centuries. It also reminded her of her father, who died from a lung disorder after being refused service at a hospital because he was a Black man.
According to the NAACP’s official website, “Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutalities, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive.”
Records obtained by the prominent organization indicated that from 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S. However, historians have said that they believe the actual number had been underreported.
“The highest number of lynchings during that time period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493,” NAACP’s site also said.
Though it was an arduous endeavor, lynching has finally been recognized as a federal hate crime in America. On March 7, U.S. Congress passed the H.R.55 or the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, named after Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was savagely murdered and his body mutilated after allegedly whistling at a white woman in 1955. The bill was first introduced in January 2021 and would make lynching punishable by a prison sentence, a fine, or both. The maximum punishment for the crime would be 30 years.
Till’s murder was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, which Holiday credited for inspiring her music.
In 1999, decades since it was released, “Strange Fruit” was named “song of the century” by Time.
