Preksha
Nina Simone’s question, “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” remains powerfully resonant. The 2015 documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone, directed by Liz Garbus, captures the many facets of the singer and activist’s life (born Eunice Waymon). Using rare archival footage, interviews, and recordings, the 1-hour and 42-minute film traces the notes of depression, mental health struggles—including her later diagnosis of bipolar disorder—and profound loneliness that shadowed Simone’s career.
In one interview, Simone admits that activism was both her calling and her burden. “I think that the artists who don’t get involved in preaching messages probably are happier,” she reflects. “But you see, I have to live with Nina, and that is very difficult.”
This tension erupted most powerfully in “Mississippi Goddam,” written after the Birmingham church bombing. “It was my first civil rights song,” she recalled, “and it erupted out of me quicker than I could write it down.” With lyrics like “Hound dogs on my trail / School children sitting in jail,” she skewered accusations of communism (“They try to say it’s a communist plot”) while demanding equality for “my sister, my brother, my people and me.” The song was promptly banned on Southern radio.
Anger as a Radical Act of Self-Definition
“I am not non-violent,” Nina once told Dr. King, as her friend Al Schackman recounts in the film. For Simone, not all anger was created equal; hers had meaning and purpose. She believed in securing rights “by any means necessary,” and her anger was a sustaining force.
Following her performance of “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead),” sung after Martin Luther King’s assassination, the documentary traces her subsequent downward spiral: a period of deep mourning, divorce, departure from America, and her move to Liberia. Her own words from this time spill like blood onto the page: “There was no life left for me in the country,” a sentiment that left a permanent stain on her personal and professional life.
Nina’s daughter, Lisa Simone, who returned from Liberia to live with her father, reflects on her mother’s transformation. She describes a woman who evolved from a source of comfort into a figure of torment, needling a haunting thread between the abuse Nina endured from her husband and the patterns of abuse she, in turn, wove into her daughter’s life.
“She went from being my comfort to the monster in my life,” Lisa says. “Now she was the person who was doing the beating. Times got really bad, to the point where I thought about committing suicide.”
Attallah Shabazz, reflecting on Simone’s marriage, situates these personal struggles within the broader turbulence of the 1960s: “The participation and activism during the 60s rendered chaos in any individual’s life. People sacrificed sanity, well-being, and life.”
“I am sorry I didn’t become the world’s first black classical pianist. I think I would have been happier,” Nina stated, reflecting on her career. “I wouldn’t change being part of the civil rights movement. But some of the songs that I sang have hurt my career. All of the controversial songs that the industry tried to punish me for, and they put a boycott on all of my records.”
The isolation and loneliness one hears in her story are often understood as purely personal confinements. However, this despair is often politically constructed, disseminated through assassinations, boycotts, the constant loss of friends and colleagues, and the looming threat of incarceration. The movement had disintegrated into memory, its participants dispersed, its leaders buried.
“Everybody’s gone,” she said. “There aren’t any civil rights! There is no reason to sing those songs. Nothing is happening. There’s no civil rights movement. Everybody’s gone.”
Activism and art, as much as they unite, can also hound one into a corner, haunted by loss and rage. This is the paradox of activism: it can isolate. The isolation is produced through the engagement itself. Through grief, anger, and the constant threat of erasure, loneliness becomes a political condition, sustained by the very structures one seeks to resist. It is as personal as it is public.
Reflecting on the passing of Lorraine Hansberry and Langston Hughes, she asked, “Who can go on? Do you realise how many we have lost? We cannot afford any more losses. They are shooting us down one by one.”
The notes Nina struck during the 1960s still ring true. In times when activism remains isolating and precarious, with the threat of incarceration constantly lingering, it is vital to remember that this environment is constructed—a loneliness that creeps like tentacles, rendering chaos whose repercussions are felt in an individual’s personal life, mental health, and career.
For Nina, and for many who lived through that decade, the emotional costs were immense. The exhaustion from constant vigilance, the grief of witnessing violence, and the pressure of financial instability bled minds and spirits dry. Depression, burnout, and loneliness were as political as they were personal. Nina Simone’s civil rights work demonstrates how resisting injustice and witnessing the deaths of colleagues alienated her socially, professionally, and emotionally, while inflicting grave scars on her mental health.
“My personal life is a shambles,” she confessed. “I have had a few love affairs, and I would love to be married, but everything has had to be sacrificed for the music.”
~~~
Preskha is a postgraduate in History with an interest in research in cultural history, cultural studies, cinema, and pedagogy.
