|
|
|
"I Don't Trust You Anymore": Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s
Ruth Feldstein
| On September 15, 1963, Nina Simone learned that four young African American girls had been killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Prior to that point, Simone, an African American singer, pianist, and songwriter, had an eclectic repertoire that blended jazz with blues, gospel, and classical music. Immediately after hearing about the events in Birmingham, however, Simone wrote the song "Mississippi Goddam." It came to her in a "rush of fury, hatred and determination" as she "suddenly realized what it was to be black in America in 1963." It was, she said, "my first civil rights song."1 |
1
|
Unlike Simone's earlier work (one critic had dubbed her a "supper club songstress for the elite"), "Mississippi Goddam" was a political anthem.2 The lyrics were filled with anger and despair and stood in stark contrast to the fast-paced and rollicking rhythm. Over the course of several verses Simone vehemently rejected the notions that race relations could change gradually, that the South was unique in terms of discrimination, and that African Americans could or would patiently seek political rights. "Me and my people are just about due," she declared. Simone also challenged principles that are still strongly associated with liberal civil rights activism in that period, especially the viability of a beloved community of whites and blacks. As she sang toward the end of "Mississippi Goddam":
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.
But this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you anymore
You keep on saying "Go Slow."
|
2
|
|
"Mississippi Goddam" expressed on a cultural terrain pain and rage. It also offered one of the many political perspectives that people in and out of movements were developing in the early 1960s, well beyond the emphasis on interracial activism that predominated among liberal supporters of civil rights. It suggests themes this essay engages at greater length: the political work a song could do and the multiple ways in which cultural production mattered to black activism—far more than as merely the background sound track to the movement, and not simply as a reflection of the pre-existing aspirations of political activists.3 |
3
|
|
Despite the swirling range of ways African Americans envisioned freedom in the early 1960s, activism that had little to do with integration or federal legislation has, until recently, been marginal to civil rights scholarship. Instead, historical accounts have largely focused on, and reproduced, a narrative that characterizes black nationalism, and in fact all demands other than integration, as something problematic that emerged in the late 1960s. What the historian Robin D. G. Kelley refers to as a "neat typology" chronologically and analytically separates liberal interracial activism—associated with a unified national success story—from more radical black activism—associated with the end of a beloved community and failure.4 |
. . . |
There are about 17256 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
