Decades after Billie Holiday’s death, ‘Strange Fruit’ is still a searing testament to injustice – and of faithful solidarity with suffering

Sixty-five years ago, on July 17, 1959, Billie Holiday died at Metropolitan Hospital in New York. The 44-year-old singer arrived after being turned away from a nearby charity hospital on evidence of drug use, then lay for hours on a stretcher in the hallway, unrecognized and unattended.