What Happened, Miss Simone? Page #5

They lived right next door

in Mount Vernon.

There are six daughters

and I was like the seventh.

So I was always riding my bike over there.

Lisa and I were the same age, and...

I think we may have

called one another twins.

It was just a great, great time.

There was music,

there were discussions.

Whether it was at our house

or Lisa's house, Nina Simone's home,

it was definitely party with a purpose.

We happened to be a fly on the wall

with some of the genius

poets and poetesses of the time, the era.

And to sit in that room and listen...

These were brilliant,

well-read, well-traveled,

charming, alluring, charismatic people

who were moved

to make a difference in the world.

I'm born of the

Young, Gifted, and Black affirmation.

For me, and those of us

in that environment,

it was daring to proclaim it...

and then share it joyously

when she sang it.

People would stand up

and engage in their African-ness

without apology...

and it's a contemporary,

hip song of the era.

It means you get to hum it in public.

She became a legend

in the activists' movement,

and through meetings

and discussions that I overheard,

she was convinced that

certain things must be done

in order to...

push the revolution.

I told them that's not the answer,

and then it began to manifest in

her attitude towards me and the business.

She'd fly off.

I remember a few nights,

you know,

you go to bed happy

and holding one another.

I wake up,

and she'd be sitting up in bed

with her arms folded,

looking at me,

thinking about killing me.

And this is how it went.

The political work became very heavy.

To me, we are the most

beautiful creatures

in the whole world, black people.

So my job is

to make them more curious

about where they came from

and their own identity

and pride in that identity.

That's why my songs...

I try to make them

as powerful as possible,

mostly just to make them

curious about themselves.

We don't know anything

about ourselves.

We don't even have

the pride and the dignity

of African people,

but we can't even talk about

where we came from.

We don't know.

It's like a lost race.

I really mean to provoke this feeling of,

like, "Who am I? Where'd I come from?"

You know, "Do I really like me?"

and, "Why do I like me?"

And, like, you know,

"If I am black and beautiful,

I really am and I know it,

and I don't care who cares or says what."

This is what compels me

to push black people

to identify with black culture.

Giving out to them that black-ness,

that black power.

Nina was a real rebel.

She didn't really fit

in the revolutionary black female role

that was offered her.

She could avoid

pretentious phoniness

and get more depth out of a song

than people are used to hearing

out of those songs.

She was a kind of patron saint

of the rebellion.

Nina started to get more aggressive.

I remember one time as she

walked right up to Dr. King and said,

"I'm not non-violent!"

And he said, "That's okay, sister.

You don't have to be."

I was never non-violent. Never.

I thought we should get our rights

by any means necessary.

And then she met Stokely Carmichael.

Miss Simone says

something very significant

in her song "Mississippi Goddam."

She says, "This country..."

She says, "This country is built on lies."

You're gonna sit in front

of your television set

and listen to LBJ tell you that,

"Violence never accomplishes anything,

my fellow Americans."

And the honky drafting you out of school

to go fight in Vietnam.

If you don't want any trouble,

keep your filthy white hands

off our beautiful black skin.

Keep them off!

I am just one of the people

who is sick of the social order,

sick of the establishment,

sick to my soul of it all.

To me, America's society

is nothing but a cancer,

and it must be exposed

before it can be cured.

I am not the doctor to cure it.

All I can do is expose the sickness.

Are you ready, black people?

Yeah!

Are you ready, black people?

Yeah!

- Are you really ready?

- Yeah!

She wanted to align herself

with the extreme terrorist militants

who were influencing her.

And after all of these meetings

with all these people,

she would come to me and,

"Let's get the guns.

Let's poison the reservoir."

All sorts of violent terrorist acts.

Are you ready to call the wrath

of black gods... black magic...

Yeah!

To do your bidding?

Black people are never

going to get their rights

unless they have

their own separate state.

And if we'd have armed revolution,

there'd be a lot of blood.

I think we'd have that separate state.

Are you ready to smash white things?

Yeah!

To burn buildings, are you ready?

Yeah!

At a certain point,

Nina started to play

only political songs and nothing else,

and that started to hurt her career.

That became a problem to book her,

because promoters

were a little bit afraid that

it might only be the political message

that you were getting.

Are you ready to kill if necessary?

Yeah!

Is your mind ready?

Yeah!

- Is your body ready?

- Yeah!

If I'd had my way,

I'd have been a killer.

I would have had guns,

and I would have gone to the South

and gave them violence for violence,

shotgun for shotgun,

but my husband told me...

I didn't know anything about guns,

and he refused to teach me,

and the only thing I had was music,

so I obeyed him.

But if I'd had my way,

I wouldn't be sitting here today.

I'd be probably dead.

Are you really, really, really ready?

Yeah!

She's putting down the white people...

I mean,

you know, like a barking dog,

but she still wanted

all the good things.

Whenever she'd see, like, Aretha Franklin

and Gladys Knight and all of these people

on the prime television shows,

she, of course, was very upset because

she wasn't able to get on to these shows

because of her reputation.

It got so that there wasn't that much work

and the expenses were high.

It was cutting the legs out

from all the work that I had done.

See you later.

I'll see you later.

I remember my dad

complaining about the fact that

she never stopped speaking out,

but that's who she was.

It was okay when you were onstage.

It's okay 'cause you let it all hang out,

and then when the show ends

and the lights go out,

"Okay, let's put the monkey

back in the cage,

and eat your banana and,

you know, just behave yourself."

It was like she was

penalized and punished

for being herself.

That's a very painful, lonely place to be.

Good evening.

Tonight my guest in the studio with me

needs almost no introduction.

She is Miss Nina Simone.

Nina, when it comes to the artists today,

we find that more of the artists

are attempting to alert America

to the need for change.

Is this really the artist's role?

Well, I think it's something

that, um, I have chosen to do

and I have felt

compelled to do it.

So it is my role...

but sometimes, I wish it wasn't.

I think that the artists

who don't get involved

in preaching messages

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