"Mississppi GODDAM"

“MISSISSPPI GODDAM”

            Eunice Kathleen Waymon better know as Nina Simone was born on February 21, 1933 in Tyron, North Carolina. She was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and civil rights activist. During the time of the civil rights movement, many artists throughout the country from Bob Dylan to Nina Simone wrote many songs to express their feelings towards the civil rights movement.

             “Mississippi GODDAM” was the first song out of

many that Nina Simone openly addresses the racial inequality that was going on in the United States. The song was written and performed by Nina Simone and was debuted on her album Nina Simone in Concert, which was performed in Carnegie Hall in 1964. “Mississippi GODDAM” was her own personal reaction of the murder of Medgar Evers and the killing of four black children in Birmingham, Alabama. The song demonstrates its political focus early on with its refrain “Alabama’s got me so upset, Tennessee’s made me lost my rest, and everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam”. In the song she rails on the common argument at the time that civil rights activists and African Americans should “go slow” and make changes in the United States incrementally: “Keep on sayin’ “go slow” … to do things gradually would bring more tragedy. Why don’t you see it? Why don’t you feel it? I don’t know, I don’t know. You don’t have to live next to me, just give me my equality!” Nina Simone performed the song in front of 40,000 people at the end of one of the Selma to Montgomery marches when she and other black activists, including Sammy Davis Jr., James Baldwin and Harry Belafonte crossed police lines.

             “Mississippi GODDAM” has a lot of sentimental reasoning’s behind it, has I read through the lyrics and tried to envision Nina Simone writing and performing a powerful song like this; I wonder what was going through her mind? Was she really sick and tired of all the violence and the abuse against African Americans? Even though, I wasn’t fortunate enough to meet Nina Simone personally and ask her any of these questions, throughout my research has the semester progresses, I will learn more about the life of Nina Simone through her music, quotes, interviews and her auto-biography “I put a spell on you”. Nina Simone and her music may be a possible project; I will enjoy working on for my final research assignment.

            My personal reflection of “Mississippi GODDAM” was very emotional. Being an African American, it really hurts me to see what my people had to go through in order for me to be where I’m at today. Fortunately, I never had to witness any racial inequality or racial segregation throughout my life time. It really breaks my heart about the four little black girls who were all under the age of fifteen that were killed at

16^th street

Baptist church that was raided by the Klu Klux Klan. The civil rights movement was about 5 decades ago and many of the activists aren’t alive today to witness the great victory of their hard work and dedication by having the first black president Barack Obama in office.

Resources:

Ø      Wikipedia – Mississippi Goddam-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississppi_Goddam

Ø      Wikipedia- Nina_Simone-

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Nina­_Simone

Nina Simone

1933-2003

"Why music was important to the Civil Rights movement"

What is Reed's argument about why music was so important to the Civil Rights movement? What are some of the specific roles it played in the movement? How does this relate or compare to your own experiences of the role of music in everyday life, or the relation of music to politics? Reed identify music has a key force in shaping, spreading, and sustaining the movement’s culture and through culture its politics. Singing proved to have wide appeal across class, regional, generational, gender and other lines of difference. Important names such as Ella Baker, Reverend King, Septima Clark and Miles Horton all played important rolls in mobilizing and organizing. Mobilizing focused on getting lots of bodies into the street for marches and large-scale demonstrations. Such actions had great dramatic value, and they were often a way to ensure media coverage of the movement. While organizing focused on the slower but deeper task of bringing out the leadership potential in all people, and on building group-centered, as opposed to individual, leadership in communities that would do the ongoing work of changing people and institutions. Freedom songs lay especially in their capacity to take the liberation messages latent in the black preaching tradition and make them available to ordinary people.  Music plays a major role in today’s society whether it’s for entertainment or for media image. Elections 2008, many artists especially in the African American culture with rap and r&b music were promoting Barack Obama for presidency or convincing people to register to vote if they haven’t already. Many artists made songs for Barack Obama becoming president or using Obama’s catch phrase “Yes We Can” in their songs or either putting his name in one of their verses. Or Sean Combs (P.Diddy), using his catch phrase “Vote or Die.” Sean Combs was trying to convincing young adults from ages 18 – 22years old to register and vote for the first time especially being the first time a black man was elected for the Democratic Party. Needless to say, Barack Obama won presidency on November 4, 2008. I wouldn’t necessarily put all the praise on rap and r&b artists in promoting Barack Obama on becoming president, but it held a major part during the elections. It made younger adults such as me; know the importance of voting or being registered to vote.

"Eyes on the Prize"

The film, Eyes on the Prize, is a documentary of African Americans fight, in the south, against the white man’s prejudice. African Americans have struggled for years to achieve the same equal rights and opportunities as white Americans. Ethnic groups have common cultural characteristics that separate them from others within a given population. The film, Eyes on the Prize, portrays the struggle of a specific ethnic group, African Americans, within the American population. Racism refers to explicit beliefs in racial supremacy such as before the civil rights movement in the United States. Eyes on the Prize show racism in the United States. 

The main factors that lead to the emergence of this movement at this time were; The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal" segregation of the races, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice. The Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement. An NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott. Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemonger who oppose them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.

The main factors I’ve learned about the civil rights movement throughout my school years and outside of school were topics such as NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).  Segregation between African Americans and white people, African American couldn’t sit near Caucasian’s by any means necessary or chastise them or there were serious consequences African Americans had to pay. Everything was separate and not equal, from using the same water fountain or restroom to segregated schools.  African American students couldn’t attend the same school institutions with Caucasian’s students.  I also learned about famous supporters and activists who were involved with the civil rights movement such as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Thurgood Marshall. I also learned about the famous court cases such as the Emmett Till case and Brown v. Board of Education case as well.

I will like to learn more on the struggles about the protest of the civil rights movement.  And learn more in-depth and behind the scenes of the civil right movements and the famous court cases that were taken place around this era. And hear more survivor’s stories on the movement and what the movement really meant to them.