History

MISSISSIPPI GODDAM 2

Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone

Angelly Chala

American History since 1877

Bryan Wuthrich

6/13/2021

Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone

Mississippi Goddam was and is one of the iconic jazz most controversial songs by Nina Simone due to her labeling it as her first civil rights song (Feldstein, 2005). Nina Simone wrote Mississippi Goddam, a protest song about racial injustice, in September 1963in under an hour, after four young girls in Birmingham, Alabama, died in a church bombing, a white supremacist terror attack that became known as the 16th street Baptist Church bombing (Feldstein, 2005). After the song was released as a single, it was banned in most places in the U.S due to the use of Goddam in the song title (Feldstein, 2005). Actually, there was footage of several boxes of records being destroyed in different places (Loudermilk, 2013). Later on, the song Mississippi Goddam was selected by the library of congress for preservation in the national recording registry for being aesthetically and culturally different (Feldstein, 2005).

This song reflected Nina Simone's growing inspiration to be part of the civil rights movement. However, the discordant upbeat indicates that the tune was not just lamenting about this sole incident but also a previous gunning down of a civil rights activist Medgar Evers, in Mississippi (Kernodle, 2008). In this song, she voiced distress and agony concerning all violent acts and oppression against black communities in the segregated South (Feldstein, 2005). Typically, she depicts that she was weaponizing the music itself.

The protest anthem Mississippi Goddam by Simone also addresses the generally sluggish pace of change and justice in America. She does this by pulling in the past and invoking in the present. Additionally, she talks of what is yet to come if America does not implement real social change. "I don't trust you anymore"/"You keep on saying, 'Go slow!" "Go slow!" / "But that's just the trouble" (Loudermilk, 2013). These are a few examples in the song that asserts that, indeed, Simone was worried about the slow pace of change and justice. This was undoubtedly true because justice for the four girls who died and other victims and the community affected by the Baptist church's event was agonizingly slow (Feldstein, 2005). For example, one of the perpetrators involved in the incident was convicted 14 years later after the attack, and while two others were not jailed until over 38 years later, while the fourth one died before justice was served (Loudermilk, 2013).

Nina continued to use Mississippi Goddam during the heights of the civil rights movement to reflect the subsequent events. For example, while she was at the Ellen show, she changed the song's second line to "St. Augustine made me lose my rest," referring to another civil rights protest in Florida (Feldstein, 2005). Similarly, when she went to Montgomery in Alabama in 1965 to entertain activists who made it from Selma to the capital city after a brutal encounter on the town's Edmund Pettus bridge, she changed the second line to "Selma made me lose my rest" to appreciative cheers (Loudermilk, 2013). A year later, at the Newport Jazz Festival, she cited another trouble spot "Watts made me lose my rest," implying the riots in the tense Los Angeles neighborhood (Kernodle, 2008). Also, in 1968 as she performed on Long Island after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated, she changed the second line to "Memphis made me lose my rest," and this time she stopped at the middle of the song and asked the audience to join her in singing if at all the song moved them at all and the audience roared in approval (Feldstein, 2005).

In the song, Simone expresses her frustrations for years of oppression whereby she uses phrases like "hound dogs on my trail" and "school children sitting in jail" as well as the common credo to "Go slow!" (Loudermilk, 2013). She uses these metaphorical words to profile the American history of institutionalized racism, inequality as well as lack of opportunity. Decades later, the song remains significant as similar issues like those addressed in the song still are prevalent in contemporary America. For example, police brutality, hiring, voting, and housing discrimination are still common for minority groups (Kernodle, 2008). This justifies Simone's anger and anguish for the delayed justice when it comes to cases involving minorities. Additionally, it shows that there is little change that can be identified within different systems in America to mitigate racism, discrimination, and oppression (Kernodle, 2008).

In years later, the song Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone becomes the barometer of Nina's moods whereby, sometimes, she contended while other times she was angry and troubled, especially in the case of Montreal in 1980 (Skaller, 2019). She started Mississippi Goddam as initially composed, but years later, she improvised the song as she had composed this song at a personal anger and anguish moment. Nina's incisive lyrics still resonate decades later, offering both a gauge of racial progress and a history lesson as well as a timeless plea that appears at the prescription near the end of the song that says that "You don't have to live next to

me/Just give me my equality"(Skaller, 2019)

References

Feldstein, R. (2005). "I Don't Trust You Anymore": Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s. The Journal of American History, 91(4), 1349-1379.

Kernodle, T. L. (2008). "I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free": Nina Simone and the Redefining of the Freedom Song of the 1960s. Journal of the Society for American Music, 2(3), 295-317.

Loudermilk, A. (2013). Nina Simone & the Civil Rights Movement: protest at her piano, audience at her feet. Journal of International Women's Studies, 14(3), 121-136.

Skaller, S. (2019). The Protest Music of Nina Simone and Buffy Sainte-Marie: Trauma, Gender-Based Violence, and Minority Feminisms. McGill University (Canada).