Meet Nina Simone: The Pianist Who Made the Times Her Subject
MentorMinds
A different career than planned
Born Eunice Waymon in North Carolina, she trained as a classical pianist and was turned down by the Curtis Institute — a rejection she believed was racial. She took a stage name in 1954 so her mother would not learn she was playing in a bar.
Music as testimony
After the murder of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing, she wrote "Mississippi Goddam". She sang for the marchers at the end of the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.
The long exile
She left the United States in the 1970s, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder late in life, and died in France in 2003 — two days after the Curtis Institute gave her an honorary degree.
Why they belong at your table
Seat Simone when your work and your convictions are asking to become the same thing, and you want someone who did not separate them.
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