Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture > Video Oral History Gallery

Video Gallery Clip Transcript: Abbey Lincoln

Billie never came to the stage with a cigarette. She's been maligned ever since she left here. She never came to the cigarette, to the stage, sick with a cigarette, she never came to the stage drunk, she was queen without her court and without anybody to protect her and she used things to dull the pain of her existence. They never talked about how beautiful she was, there's never been a more beautiful woman, physically than Billie Holiday. She sang Strange Fruit when none of the other queens sang it about the murders of the men, the hanging, the lynching of the men in the South. She sang this song, and she sang, she wrote and sang, God Bless the Child That's Got His Own, she was a philosopher.