This is the tragic story of jazz singer Billie Holiday and how she was killed, in part, by the man who created the U.S.’s War on Drugs. Though Holiday died in 1959, this article — adapted from a book and published here in Politico Magazine — is based on five interviews with people who knew Holiday as well as diaries, letters and files left behind by a man obsessed with the singer, a man who preyed on racial fears and who orchestrated the harassment that ultimately led to her death.
Here’s a podcast that discusses the story behind the lynching of two black teenagers in 1937 that inspired the song “Strange Fruit,” a song Billie Holiday, a black woman, dared to sing, defying the authorities who told her to stop. “Strange Fruit” became one of the reasons she was initially targeted by the brand-new Federal Bureau of Narcotics.