Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon and was a pianist, singer, songwriter and civil rights activist. Her ambition was to become the first black concert pianist but the realities of racism and poverty forced her to direct her energies into blues and jazz. Her music was pivotal in the US civil rights movement. Amongst many other civil rights songs, she wrote and performed Mississippi Goddam in response to the bombing of a church in Alabama that killed four black children, Old Jim Crow, in reaction to segregation in the South, and Four Women, about four stereotypes of African-American women.
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