“Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldn’t treat them, then sent them to jail. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs.”
– Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday died in 1959 at the Metropolitan Hospital in New York, handcuffed to her hospital bed with 2 armed police guards outside of her room keeping friends and family away while going through opium withdraws at 44 years old…
Strange Fruit
After Billie Holiday recorded Strange Fruit in 1939, Henry Anslinger took a personal interest in Billie and waged a personal war against her. Pursued by Henry Anslinger for over 20 years, Billie Holiday was a victim of the same inhumane laws which plague our society to this day…
Billie Holiday-Strange fruit
Anslinger assigned a undercover officer named Jimmy Fletcher who’s main objective was to track her every movement and to get a conviction of Billie. He failed at this goal and was quoted as saying about Billie “She was the type who would make anyone sympathetic because she was the loving type.”
Not satisfied Anslinger struck a deal with Billie Holidays piece of shit ex husband to set her up using different agents and got his arrest.
The Telgraph Herald, January 23, 1949
Billie Holiday – God Bless The Child
Billie Holiday was sent to prison for 1 year to go cold turkey on a opium dependency in a cold hard cell…
“It’s tough enough coming off when you’ve got somebody who loves you and trusts you and believes in you,” she wrote. “I didn’t have anybody.” Actually, she said, that’s not quite right. She had Anslinger’s agents, “betting their time, their shoe leather, and their money that they would get me. Nobody can live like that.”- Billie Holiday
Coming out of jail as a now marked “criminal”, she could no longer perform anywhere alcohol was served… The years passed but the attention from law enforcement and Anslinger never did…
Sick and dying she checked herself into the hospital in New York. Police hearing of this event made a big show to enforce a months earlier charge for possession, placing her under arrest and handcuffing Billie to her hospital bed… Placing 2 armed guards at her room, Police denied friends and family to see Billie as she lay dying on her hospital bed…
“Billie ‘paid her debt’ to society, but society never paid its debt to her.” – a friend of Billie’s
Billie Holiday – The very thought of you