Lori Grisham

USA TODAY Network

A public relations firm called "Strange Fruit PR" in Austin, Texas, apologized and changed their company name after it was widely criticized on Twitter for being racially insensitive.

The firm changed the company name to Perennial Public Relations, co-owners Mary Mickel and Ali Slutsky wrote in a statement Tuesday to USA TODAY Network.

"We sincerely apologize to those offended by the former name of our firm," they wrote. "In no way did we ever intend for the name of our firm to offend nor infer any implication of racism."

"Strange Fruit" is the name of a famous 1939 Billie Holiday song about the lynching of black men and women in the south during the Jim Crow era. Lynching is never explicitly mentioned in the song, but the "fruit" hanging from the trees refers to African-American bodies.

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit," the song begins. "Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

Twitter users implored the public relations company, which handles food and hospitality clients, to reconsider their name.

The PR firm disabled its Twitter account, Facebook page and website under the old name.

Mickel and Slutsky knew about the song when they started the company in 2012, according to a statement in the Austin American-Statesman, but thought enough timed had passed that people would not associate it with their company.

"Had we known the horrible connotations this name evokes, we would have never chosen it in the first place. We just didn't get it, but now we do," Mickel wrote.

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