Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone (1964)

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Mississippi Goddam

Mississippi Goddam is a song written and performed by American singer, Nina Simone and released in 1964. This song is a track of her album Nina Simone in Concert, her first release for the Dutch label Philips Records. [1]

Nina composed the song as her vocals upon the Birmingham church bombing in September 1963, killing four young girls. This makes Nina to be part of the Civil Rights movement as one of her friends, Lorraine Hansberry, told her that she was part of the movement as she was black. “It made no difference whether I admitted it or not,” Nina said, “The fact was still true.” [2]

Nina Simone

Black Empowerment

Mississippi Goddam wrote in 1963 after an incident of church bombing by a white supremacist. This song depicts racial injustice and how black people have to suffer and endure their fight and fear in this country for centuries, whilst it still happens decades later. Black community had to fight harder for every aspect, literally. [3]

On the recording she said that this song is as "a show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it yet." The song begins with a slow tune with its political focus in the refrain "Alabama's got me so upset, Tennessee's made me lose my rest, and everybody knows about Mississippi goddam." In the song, she says "They 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!" [4]

Nina pours her soul when she wrote the song of an inequality of black community in the country. [5]

Part of lyrics from Mississippi Goddam :

Picket lines

School boy cots

They try to say it’s a communist plot

All I want is equality

For my sister my brother my people and me. [6]

References