New Nina Simone Film Captures Singer and Activist’s Uncompromising Voice
HAVANA TIMES – As the Black Lives Matter movement grows across the country and the the nation mourns the death of the nine worshipers killed at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, we look back at the life of one of the most important voices of the civil rights movement: the singer Nina Simone, known as the High Priestess of Soul. While Simone died in 2003, a new documentary, “What Happened, Miss Simone?,” sheds light on her music and politics.
Her song “Mississippi Goddam” became an anthem of the civil rights movement. She wrote it in the wake of the assassination of Medgar Evers in Mississippi and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four black children. We speak to the film’s director, Liz Garbus, and Al Schackman, Nina Simone’s guitarist and music director for over 40 years.
By implication, your comment assumes that that I give the racists in the US a free pass while I busy myself criticizing the Castros. Bad assumption.
What a tear jerker Patterson. Instead of forever bashing the Castro’s, look closer to home where racism is rife, alive and kicking. The white interloping ‘Americans’ are just more covert in their hatred and subversive activities. They don’t have to wear KKK costumes to carry out their racist behaviour.
Nina Simone is a very inspiring person. For those of you that aren’t familiar with her I suggest you watch some of her concerts on You Tube.
My mother was an active civil rights worker/marchers during the Sixties. She was a frequent Freedom bus rider throughout the South. She continues to remind her children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren that she marched with Dr. King. She only stands 5’2″ and never weighed more than 125 lbs. Yet, she faced down firehoses and police dogs. She has instilled in her family a keen sense to identify injustice and tyranny no matter where it exists. What the Castros have done to the Cuban people to sustain their dictatorship is clearly unjust and tyrannical. My frequent anti-CASTRO comments reflect my mother’s legacy to speak out against injustice. What must happen in Cuba if Cuba is to be free is the same kind of resistance to injustice (hopefully peaceful) that Black folks and others demonstrated in the US during the 1960s.