#piscesseason 🔥❤️#Repost @nmaahc ・・・ #OnThisDay in 1933, singer-songwriter, musician and activist Nina Simone was born. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone was trained as an accomplished piano player from a child, earning a one-year scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music in Philadelphia upon graduating high school with honors. Simone was denied admission to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia despite a well-received audition, and attributed her denial to discrimination. This event shaped her views on race relations and influence her activism. Fortunately, she was able to receive private piano lessons with Vladmir Sokoloff, an instructor at the Curtis Institute. She sang and played piano at a New Jersey bar to fund her lessons, and adopted the name “Nina” to keep her employment a secret from her conservative mother. Simone earned rave reviews for her performances. She signed her first recording contract and released her debut album, “Little Blue Girl,” in 1959.⠀ ⠀ After the racially motivated assassination of World War II veteran and American civil rights activist Medgar Evers and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four little girls, Simone produced and created protest songs as “Mississippi Goddam,” “Old Jim Crow,” “Why (The King of Love is Dead),” and “Young, Gifted and Black.” The latter two songs were dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and female author Lorraine Hansberry, whose lives were tragically cut short. In an interview with JET Magazine, Simone expressed her belief that the release of “Mississippi Goddamn” — which she referred to as “her first civil rights song” — hurt her career, and that the music industry punished her for her activism. She left her record company and moved abroad in 1970, living in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean before returning to the United States in 1995 to reclaim music royalties. #APeoplesJourney #ANationsStory #BecauseofHerStory #BlackHistoryMonth ⠀ ⠀ 📸 Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of David. D. Spitzer, © David D. Spitzer