“When I was still in my crib I was taken to church [in Tryon, NC], and the ladies there looked down at me and saw that I...

“When I was still in my crib I was taken to church [in Tryon, NC], and the ladies there looked down at me and saw that I was clapping along to the hymns. Not just waving my hands, but clapping in time to the music.” - Nina Simone, I PUT A SPELL ON YOU: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY Nina Simone’s formative years in Tryon, Lynn, and Asheville were filled with joy and pain – her autobiography speaks the double-sidedness of Simone’s (then Eunice Waymon, as the signature on the wallet-sized indicates) Tarheel years. Playing music pleased Waymon/Simone but also isolated her from her peers -- performing meant opportunity and exposure to the cruelties of the colorline at once. On this day of Black History Month, let’s celebrate a North Carolina artist for whom telling the complex truth about America and self-expression were inseparable. Image: Eunice Waymon (Nina Simone) wallet-sized B&W portrait, aged 12 [1945]. Signed “Love, Eunice in black ink.” Unidentified photographer, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (@nmaahc), under Smithsonian non-commercial use conditions Alt text: Eunice Waymon (Nina Simone) in dark jacket over printed blouse, looks into camera