Thread by @monaeltahawy

Nina Simone was born on this day in 1933. My love for her is boundless. Throughout the day I will share some of my favourite things that #NinaSaid in appreciation and respect ❤️✊🏽💜 (Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In a 1999 episode of BBC HARDtalk, Tim Sebastian asked Nina Simone “Tell me about music as a political weapon.” Here’s what #NinaSaid

Asked “So you sing from anger?” #NinaSaid “I sing from intelligence.”

On her friendship with playwright Lorraine Hansberry, #NinaSaid: “Lorraine started off my political education, and through her I started thinking about myself as a Black person in a country run by white people and a woman in a world run by men.” lithub.com/young-gifted-a…

Sept15, 1963, a bomb killed 4 young Black girls Birmingham, AL. #NinaSaid “I had it in my mind to go out and kill someone...I didn’t yet know who, but someone I could identify as being in the way of my people.” She wrote Mississippi Goddam in an hour
google.ca/amp/s/www.newy…

“When they killed those children is when I said ‘I have to start using my talent to help Black people...When they killed those little girls in Alabama, that’s when I changed,” #NinaSaid

In the mid-1960s Vernon Jordan, the head of the Urban League, asked Nina Simone how come she wasn’t ‘more active in civil rights’.

“Motherfucker, I am civil rights,” #NinaSaid

lrb.co.uk/v38/n12/john-l…

“The first time I wore my hair African was after Pastel Blues...It reflected black pride, and that’s when I changed it. I identified a lot with Africa, and learned what they did, and started wearing my hair in an Afro,” #NinaSaid
the-pool.com/arts-culture/m…

“All my songs, the important ones, have razor cuts, I call them, at the end. I cut you, I make you think and it’s immediate... When any Black woman hears that song, she either starts crying or she wants to go out and kill somebody,” #NinaSaid about her song Four Women

“I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear!” #NinaSaid

Nina Simone is revolution!

What an incredible legacy she left us.

I am spending today listening to and celebrating her.

What are your favourite #NinaSimone songs?