STRANGE FRUITShop the archiveEpisode 2 · 1955 · St. Louis, Missouri
White History Month
St. Louis, 1955. Samuel Carter has done nothing — and that has never been enough. When a lie turns a crowd into a mob, Samuel runs into the woods and through an ancient, impossible tree, and comes out the other side into a St. Louis that looks exactly like his own. Same year. Same street. Same summer heat. Except here, the hierarchy has flipped.
- Collection
- Season 1
- Episode
- 02
- Runtime
- 3:23
- Year
- 1955
- Setting
- St. Louis, Missouri
Images from the episode
The visual archive
Select a frame to look closer.
Frame from the finished film · 01
History behind the horror
One city. Two versions of history.
Samuel Carter escapes one kind of danger only to enter a world built from the same machinery with the hierarchy reversed.
The episode uses speculative horror to ask what changes when power changes hands—and what remains when the structure itself survives.
Characters
Samuel CarterAt the center of the story
Production notes
Set in St. Louis during the summer of 1955.
Expanded beyond the episode as a full-length novel.
An immersive audio edition is currently in production.
Content advisory
Racial violence, mob pursuit, and period-accurate language.
The world around the story
1955: the country could no longer look away.
Samuel's story is fictional. Its summer unfolds during a year when racial terror and organized resistance forced the United States into a national reckoning.
Historical context · The episode itself is a work of fiction.
August 1955
The murder of Emmett Till
The killing of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till and the acquittal of his murderers became a catalyst for the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Explore the source · Library of CongressDecember 1955
The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins
Rosa Parks's arrest sparked a 381-day boycott that turned sustained local organizing into an international symbol of resistance.
Explore the source · Library of Congress
Continue the story
The episode ends.
The story goes deeper.
Return to this world in the full novel-length expansion of White History Month.
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