The preservation team also includes the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission and the World Monuments Fund. They will seek new protections, evaluate preservation needs, and conduct market and feasibility studies to develop a sustainable new use for the home that was once a symbol of the middle-class success of Simone’s parents.
“The artistic and social impacts of Nina Simone reach every corner of the world, and her birthplace is an important symbol of that legacy,” said Joshua David, president and CEO of the World Monuments Fund. “We are proud to join forces with the National Trust and other partners to underscore the global cultural significance of the Nina Simone House and help ensure it can become a beacon for future generations.”
Simone’s daughter Lisa is on board with the project.
“Standing for something one believes in often requires great courage in the face of harsh criticism and judgment,” Lisa Simone said. “My mother chose to be an outspoken warrior for that which she believed in. Her birthplace now being named a National Treasure is confirmation that no effort put forth, with true authenticity, goes unnoticed. As her only child, it brings me great joy to see my mother, Dr. Nina Simone, honored and remembered as mightily as she lived.”
Lyrics such as Hound dogs on my trail, schoolchildren sitting in jail, black cat cross my path, I think every day’s gonna be my last from “Mississippi Goddamn,” and countless others, put her in powerful circles of civil rights leaders, activists and artists such as Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, but they are eerily applicable today. The renovation will allow space for a purposeful view of the past, for timely inspiration of social consciousness for today.
Simone’s childhood home is believed to be the figurative birthplace of her immersion into music, performance and culture. Her early life will be chronicled here as an up-close view of her gospel-infused upbringing.
Simone played the piano and sang at St. Luke’s C.M.E. Church, where her two parents were ministers. Her mother, Mary-Kate Waymon, once recalled that many would attend church service just to hear Simone play. “When she struck the piano, people said something ran all over the church,” Waymon said in a candid interview from the Nina Simone — The Legend documentary. Her mother recounted distinct memories of Simone in the home, practicing classical music on the piano for seven hours at a time and memorizing 19 pages of music in one sitting but crying all the while.
Simone remained in her childhood home and attended Allen High School, a private boarding school for black girls, from September 1945 until June 1950. After graduating from high school, she left North Carolina to study music at Juilliard. She later moved to Philadelphia and worked in New Jersey. The songstress later changed her name to Nina Simone in an attempt to hide from her mother’s disapproval of her performing the blues, a genre that she called “the devil’s music.” Simone was later named to Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Singers of All Time list and is well-known for songs such as “Four Women,” “Feeling Good,” “Young, Gifted and Black,” “I Put a Spell on You” and many more.
Article Appeared @https://theundefeated.com/features/thanks-to-these-four-artists-nina-simones-childhood-home-is-now-a-national-treasure/