Today we celebrate one of Appalachia’s finest musicians, and no we aren’t talking fiddles and banjos. We are talking about civil rights icon and piano extraordinaire Nina Simone. On February 21st 1933 Nina Simone was born in the small mountain town of Tryon, NC. The sixth child of a poor family, Simone, whose birth name was Eunice Kathleen Waymon cut her teeth playing piano at her local church. It’s clear she had the rebel spirit from an early age. During a recital when she was just 12 her parents were told they could not sit in the front row of their own child’s performance because they were black. In response Nina refused to play until her parents were allowed to sit up front.
Recognizing her talent, Simone’s piano teacher started up a fund to send her to the Allen High School for Girls an African American private school in Asheville, NC where she could further her musical skills. When attempting to attend college, Simone again ran up against the Jim Crow attitudes of the time, but this time north of the Mason-Dixon in Philadelphia. Despite what was said to be a glowing audition, Nina Simone was denied admission to the Curtis Institute of Music in 1950. Undeterred by the act of institutional racism she continued her musical studies with private tutors.
In 1963 Nina Simone wrote Mississippi Goddam in response to the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL. She said the song title was “like throwing 10 bullets back at them.” Mississippi Goddam was a direct challenge to moderates telling the civil rights movement to “go slow”, a hard pill to swallow as Jim Crow segregation backed by Klan violence continued to terrorize black communities unabated. While the song was well received by many it sparked a backlash in many southern states with radio stations refusing to play it and one North Carolina radio station smashing the promotional copies of the record and sending it back to Simone’s record label. Many of her other songs addressed civil rights and equality including “Old Jim Crow” and “Young Gifted and Black”.
From then on the civil rights struggle was always present in her performances. During the rise of her political activism, which saw her speak at mass meetings and the Selma to Mongomery march, her musical career slowed significantly. Unlike King and other icons of the civil rights movement, Simone advocated for African American’s right to fight back and was a proponent of armed revolution.
In part due to demoralization from racist backlash to her activism, Simone left the US for Barbados in 1970. At one point she returned to the US and found out she had an arrest warrant for refusing to pay taxes as a protest against the Vietnam War, so she again returned to Bardados.
Simone continued to perform and write music through the 80’s and 90’s but never did make her peace with the United States, telling the audience in a 1998 performance in Newark, “If you’re going to come see me again, you’ve got to come to France, because I ain’t coming back.” Nina Simone died in France in 2003 and her ashes were spread in several different countries across Africa.
“Mississippi Goddam”
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
Alabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Alabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Can’t you see it
Can’t you feel it
It’s all in the air
I can’t stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
Alabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
This is a show tune
But the show hasn’t been written for it, yet
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day’s gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don’t belong here
I don’t belong there
I’ve even stopped believing in prayer
Don’t tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I’ve been there so I know
They keep on saying “Go slow!”
But that’s just the trouble
“do it slow”
Washing the windows
“do it slow”
Picking the cotton
“do it slow”
You’re just plain rotten
“do it slow”
You’re too damn lazy
“do it slow”
The thinking’s crazy
“do it slow”
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don’t know
I don’t know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
I made you thought I was kiddin’
Picket lines
School boy cots
They try to say it’s a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you’d stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You’re all gonna die and die like flies
I don’t trust you any more
You keep on saying “Go slow!”
“Go slow!”
But that’s just the trouble
“do it slow”
Desegregation
“do it slow”
Mass participation
“do it slow”
Reunification
“do it slow”
Do things gradually
“do it slow”
But bring more tragedy
“do it slow”
Why don’t you see it
Why don’t you feel it
I don’t know
I don’t know
You don’t have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
That’s it!
Rural Organizing And Resilience 