This Week In Black History February 21-27, 2024

FEBRUARY 21 1933—Song stylist and activist Nina Simone is born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, N.C. She was a child prodigy who was playing the piano by age 4. She had numerous songs to her cred­it, but one of the most memorable was “Mississippi Goddam” which was com­posed as a protest against the terrorist bombing of a Black church in Birming­ham, Ala., which resulted in the deaths of four little Black girls. Simone, often referred to as the High Priestess of Soul, died in France on April 21, 2003. 1965—The most prominent Black na­tionalist of the 20th century, Malcolm X, is assassinated on this day in Har­lem, N.Y.’s Audubon Ballroom while giving a speech which was to issue a call for Black unity. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Neb., on May 19, 1925, he graduated at the top of his high school class but had his dream of becoming a lawyer crushed when a teacher told him that was “not realistic for a Nigger.” He gradually drifted into the under­worlds of first Boston and then New York where he became a drug dealer and gangster known as “Detroit Red.” He was friends with comedian and up­coming star Redd Foxx who at...