Nina Simone, born on this day in 1933, was an American singer, pianist, composer, and civil rights activist, known for songs such as "Mississippi Goddam" and "Four Women".

Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon to a working class family in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933. Showing prodigious musical talent at a young age, at twelve years old, she refused to perform at her first classical recital until her parents were allowed to sit in the front of the recital hall.

Throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Simone made a living as musician and singer in the U.S., teaching, playing, and singing. Although Simone was and is often categorized as a jazz musician, she dismissed the term, saying "To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music."

Following the white supremacist murders of Medgar Evers and four young black girls in the Birmingham Church Bombing of 1963, she released "Nina Simone in Concert", an album which contained the song "Mississippi Goddam", raging explicitly against racism in the U.S.

Mississippi Goddam, which Simone stated was "like throwing ten bullets back at them", was boycotted in some southern regions, and copies of the album were smashed and mailed back to her record distributor. Undeterred, Simone continued to be overtly political in her music, authoring "Old Jim Crow" and performing songs such as "Strange Fruit" and "Backlash Blues", written by Langston Hughes.

Simone left the U.S. for Barbados in September 1970, living in London and the Netherlands before finally settling in France. In 2003, she passed away in Carry-le-Rouet.

"It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution - real girl's talk."

- Nina Simone, on conversations with playwright Lorraine Hansberry