March 1964

Nina Simone wrote and performed Mississippi Goddam in 1964, a furious response to the murder of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four Black girls. The song was one of the first major protest songs of the civil rights movement by a Black artist and marked Simone's transformation into an uncompromising political voice. Her willingness to sacrifice commercial success for political integrity made her an enduring symbol of artistic courage.

Baraka's one-act play, depicting a charged encounter between a Black man and a white woman on a New York subway, won the Obie Award and became a watershed moment in Black theater. It helped catalyze the Black Arts Movement and remains one of the most studied plays of the twentieth century.