Guest blog by RFC Founder Robert Meeropol
Six years ago I posted a blog on the RFC website entitled “Strange Convergence” (available here). In it I compared details of the life of my mother, Ethel Rosenberg, to that of Billie Holiday, the singer who made Abel Meeropol’s song, “Strange Fruit,” famous. Ethel and Billie appeared to be an unlikely couple. However, they were both born in poverty in 1915, had excellent singing voices, although Billie’s surpassed Ethel’s, and were precocious. Ethel graduated high school at 15 and helped lead a victorious strike at 19, while Billie sang in Harlem clubs at 17, and was a successful recording artist by 20. And they both got in trouble with the law, which led to their untimely deaths. Finally, there’s the Abel Meeropol connection; Abel adopted Ethel’s children and wrote Billie’s most famous song.
Kids wondering if their father will go to prison this summer for participating in a nonviolent demonstration. Young siblings staying with relatives as their dad—already struggling financially after he was fired from his job for his organizing—couch surfs while their mom self-isolates with a fever and other worrisome symptoms.
(guest blog by RFC Communications Director, Amber Black)
Two topics consistently engage our supporters more than any others: the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the song “Strange Fruit.” It’s been 65 years since the parents of our founder were executed, and 80 years since Abel Meeropol (the man who along with his wife Anne, adopted the Rosenbergs’ orphaned sons) wrote the anti-lynching anthem first as a poem and then set it to music.
But all these decades later, both the case and the song pop up virtually every day in a huge array of contexts including hard news and popular culture. So we’ve begun to spotlight them in a “Strange Fruit” and Rosenberg “Mention of the Day” on our social media.
Last week Angels in America closed after a triumphant, award-winning revival on Broadway, more than a quarter century after it first took the theater world by storm. During Angels’ first Broadway run, I was in college and deliberately avoided the press or any discussion about the play. I was writing my thesis, which explored the frames of meaning—historical, legal, cultural, etc.—in my grandparents’ case with a focus on how they impacted the representation and understanding of my grandmother.
On today’s anniversary of my grandparents’ execution, I’m thinking about two-year-old Angel and his big brother Bryan, who don’t understand why they can’t live with both parents anymore.
(guest blog by RFC Communications Director, Amber Black)
For people who have been gone for almost 65 years, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg turn up in the news and pop culture a lot…and in some surprising ways.
(guest blog by RFC Communications Director, Amber Black)
It’s large, the monument. It resides on a nondescript corner of an intersection in Havana, Cuba. The striking portrait in stone honors a young couple, killed by the U.S. government on June 19, 1953. They’re viewed as traitors by some, heroes by others. In this country where a tank rests on the lawn of the university in the capital, the legacy of the Cold War affects citizens’ lives in a visceral way. There’s tremendous irony involved, but it makes perfect sense that there would be a memorial to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in Havana, and that I would go and find it.
On September 28, 2015 (which would have been my grandmother’s 100th birthday) Members of the New York City Council issued a proclamation which declared the U.S. government, “wrongfully executed Ethel Rosenberg.” The proclamation concluded, “now therefore BE IT KNOWN: That we, the undersigned Members of the New York City Council, honor the life and memory of Ethel Rosenberg in observance of the 100th anniversary of her birth.”
Guest blog by Robert Meeropol, Rosenberg Fund for Children Founder & son of Ethel & Julius Rosenberg
It has been a year since the release of David Greenglass’s grand jury testimony in which he denied my mother, Ethel Rosenberg’s, involvement in espionage. This was the final element necessary for me to pursue a plan I’d thought about for decades.
by Robert Meeropol
originally published on Robert Meeropol's blog, Still Out on a Limb
In March the Rosenberg Fund for Children launched an online petition campaign to exonerate my mother, Ethel. I urge everyone to sign the petition, and to spread the word throughout your communities.
