Nina Simone Sings

The Fortune Teller | Birmingham, Alabama in August 1963

Salute to Freedom concert in 1963

James Baldwin speaking

Ray Charles is the headliner

Nina Simone sings

Intelligent, restless, beautiful,
Nina Simone was not yet the
Voice of the civil rights moment.
She was not yet the
Vehicle for activism.
She listened to James Baldwin speak.
MLK sat in the front row.
She had wanted to play Bach.
She wrote and sang
“Brown Baby” instead,
As the guards, guns, and dogs
Prowled the field.

Medgar Evers had been
Assassinated in the spring,
Gunned down in his own driveway.
In the fall
The Sixteenth Street Bombing
Took the lives of four little girls
Who wanted to attend Bible Study.

After that, her songs would come.
“Mississippi Goddamn”
“Backlash Blues”
“To Be Young, Gifted, and Black”
No fear, they said about her.
I’m not nonviolent,
She confided in
Martin Luther King.
When he fell,
Assassinated in Memphis,
She wrote
“Why? (The King of Love is Dead)”

Her voice served her emotions,
Low, raspy, wailing, a moan.
We listened enthralled.
No one sang like Nina Simone.

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