In 1939, Billie Holiday rode the service elevator in a midtown Manhattan hotel on her way to sing on stage. Of course, the hotel had a front door, but Holiday wasn’t allowed to use it because she was Black. Little did she know this was just the beginning of the troubles that would follow her that night.

Holiday stuck to her setlist, including singing “ Strange Fruit ,” a hauntingly emotional song against lynching with lyrics like “Southern trees bear strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” Her self-described way of being able to “sing like an instrument” made the performance particularly effective.

But that night she received a warning from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), a government agency which lasted from 1930 to 1968: She was never to sing the song again.…