Speaks of Rivers/Strange Fruit / Hard Times Blues by Pearl Primus 1945

Pearl Primus was a member of the New Dance Group where she was encouraged by its socially and politically active members to develop her early solo dances dealing with the plight of African Americans in the face of racism. Strange Fruit (1945), a piece in which a woman reflects on witnessing a lynching, used the poem by the same name by Abel Meeropol (publishing as Lewis Allan). Hard Time Blues (1945) comments on the poverty of African American sharecroppers in the South.