Film: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)
Written by: Suzan-Lori Parks, Johann Hari
Directed by: Lee Daniels
Starring: Andra Day, Trevante Rhodes, Garrett Hedlund
Dear Children of God,
Some things can’t be spoken or explained. They are sung or shown.
And sometimes our bodies say things our words cannot.
Movies show us stories, and sometimes the stories reveal underlying truths that have been buried. Other times, movies just take you away for a while—from your life.
Entertainment is escape and distraction. We all need some of that from time to time. Art in film is different. Art takes you deeper inside.
There are so many artists we know now, who were misunderstood in their lifetimes; who were mentally sick or addicted to drugs; who were poor and blamed and scapegoated. Now we know their names (some of them). Now, we feel them and who they were, and we see their validity. People do not make art to be recognized, though they’d love to be recognized. People make art to speak, to illustrate, to show, to sing, to soar. To live. To become whole. It is a vibration of am-ness. It is that it is. And there is within art, a crust that connects us all as humans on the planet. Like soil. Like earth.
How often do white church leaders recognize the Jesus path of the cross that has been taken by people of color in the United States?
Let’s do a comparison of Billie Holiday and Jesus, to clarify how God actually works through us as human beings—even when the path ain’t pretty.
Both Ms. Holliday and Jesus left a big mark on people for sharing their talent, their words, their knowing, their very being. Both endured scrutiny and guys in suits trying to get in their way, break them down, stop them from speaking and sharing their messages. (Okay, in Jesus-history, the guys were in robes, not suits. You can still see the similarity.) Both had to keep shining their light, regardless of what obstacles arose. And both Billie and Jesus hung out with people who liked to live it up a bit.
In the Lee Daniels’ film, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, we see the way people in positions of power can find a way to go after someone, just because that person threatens status quo and illuminates a truth people are afraid to hear or see. Those in positions of power can brand their attacks as one thing or another—”the war on drugs,” for instance. Sounds good on the outside. But underneath, there are other motives and intentions. Billie Holiday experienced this, yet she kept singing.
The song Ms. Holiday kept singing, which the FEDS wanted her to stop, was “Strange Fruit.” Most of her songs were love songs, but this song opened people’s eyes to the lynching that was happening in U.S. south, which people in power were ignoring. The guys in their suits didn’t like that Billie Holiday could rile people up, that she might be able to spread this seed of awareness about the lynchings conducted by the KKK . So the dudes found an excuse and a reason to get in Ms. Holiday’s way. Their obsession with her, and breaking her down, was never about helping anyone or “doing the right thing.” It was about control. It was about their bias. It was about restricting the power of her voice and her soul. Her words and her power just disrupted them from doing business as usual.
If anyone ever wants to question the entitlement that comes with white men who have money and status, let’s look at the felon who just became president again in 2025. His is the perfect example of a wealthy white man who does what he wants, has no accountability from government officials, and feels entitled and validated to continue lying, cheating, and committing crimes. Why wouldn’t he keep following that sordid path? When it comes down to it, no one stops him or stopped him, because he throws a little-boy tantrum. If a black man or a woman had paid hush money to a prostitute in order to win a United States Election, and that information became known to the public? Well, we’d see a wildly different outcome in a court room.
So, the quiet persecution stories of the past need to be told, and we need to keep re-directing people’s attention to what matters. The source. The roots. The roots are the why something is the way it is.
A TikTok Social Media World can land us government processes of performance and spectacle, rather than law. Perhaps it was always this way, but we are definitely more distracted by the amount of information we consume daily. People will—and have always—used words and law to create all kinds of stories that perhaps run alongside the truth, but are not the truth themselves. There is implicit bias in our systems, and it is art—most often—that reveals the hidden truths we don’t like to face. It is art that opens us up and helps us behave differently—from the spirit inside us, and not from set rules that can be broken or manipulated to achieve an aim.
Art works like a seed. It plants something that takes time to ripen. Still, it is there. And that seed can lead to another and another that help create justice and truth-telling, and love, and equality. Alternately, art or other forms of work can plant seeds that are deadly, soul-sucking, irresponsible, and poisonous.
We have to pay attention to what we see, what we watch, what art we feel in our bodies. And we have to listen and consider the roots of any given situation before jumping to any quick conclusions.
Andra Day plays Billie Holiday in this film, and she is striking and beautiful, and shows the way Bille Holiday kept living her life and loving people despite attempts to bring her down. In one interview, a man says to her, “Why play the song? Wouldn’t your life be easier if you just behaved?”
He doesn’t understand the workings of the soul. He doesn’t understand the mechanism of control and silencing that people without a voice endure every day. He doesn’t understand why Billie sees it as a moral obligation to shed light and truth on a problem that many people insist on covering up. He doesn’t understand the responsibility she feels to give voice to those who have no voice.
It is easy to brand people by their weaknesses and discount their power and talent because they have one problem or another. Billie had a drug problem, so the men trying to imprison her wanted to discredit her. People in power have choices about how to use their power, always. They could have actually focused on helping pass the law that protected men from being lynched, which is the issue “Strange Fruit” speaks about. (Were racist whites sometimes drugged up, full of alcohol, too? Weren’t they suffering mental illness?) Instead the guys in suits showed the true nature of their hearts by attempting to tear a black woman down again and again, and ignoring the very painful and true topic she spoke of.
Her song became even more important and well-known because she kept singing it. She never let them shame her.
Strangely Yours,
Ms. Wonderful
*The United States vs. Billie Holiday is streaming on Hulu.
Article from PBS about “Strange Fruit” here.