Philadelphia-born Billie Holiday gets her due in new movie, documentary

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- You may not know it but Billie Holiday aka Lady Day was born in West Philadelphia, not Baltimore.

And while she is legendary for her singing, she was also a civil rights activist and the victim of a decades-long campaign by the federal government to silence her. Her story is ready to be told in two new features.

A new movie by Lee Daniels, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, is premiering soon on Hulu.

6abc will also be releasing a companion documentary, Looking for Lady Day, on our family of streaming apps.

We'll take you to the places she stayed and sang, meet a Philadelphia musician who played with her and show you where she was born, arrested and tried.

Philadelphia was the center of it all and so was Billie Holiday's song, Strange Fruit.

* Special thanks to The Clef Club, Harriett's Bookshop and the Charles L Blockson Afro American collection at Temple University Libraries.