Lewis Allan(1903-1986)

Meeropol wrote the song "Strange Fruit," a powerful anti-lynching song made famous by Billie Holiday, in 1939 after he saw a photograph of a black man who had been lynched by a white mob in Georgia. The song became a big, and controversial, hit. Shortly after WWII, MGM hired Meeropol to write a song for a short film they were making about tolerance, The House I Live In (1945). After the film came out, Meeropol was incensed to discover that the studio had cut out one line in the song, "My neighbors who are black and white," as they thought it would cut into the film's ticket sales in the South.