I just watched this documentary on the life of Nina Simone (What happened, Miss. Simone?, Netflix), and it touched my soul. Nina Simone was and will always be a Queen with a gift to this planet and our people. Watching the documentary made me appreciate the Civil Rights movement even more, especially on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. People like Medgar Evers, Malcom X, Lorraine Hansberry, Betty Shabazz, Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King any many others played such a pivotal role in People of Color’s liberation and future freedoms. Nina Simone sacrificed her lively hood, her career and her peace of mind to be a part of a movement that would change the lives of every single person of color. In the prime of Nina Simone’s career, where she could have been and done anything her heart desired, she decided to use her fame and popularity to inspire her people. She joined the leaders of the Civil Rights movement and she used her god-giving ability to sing and play the piano to remind her people of how amazing and beautiful they really were. If says a lot about a women that was willing to risk it all, to play her part in making sure people like me could be free and do whatever my heart desired. Watching this Netflix documentary gave me a deeper look into the life of Nina Simone. In her younger years her husband was very abusive, and Nina Simone made it clear that at one point in her life, she was scared of her husband. He played a major part in her career and he helped Nina do things in her career that she never imagined. The flip side to that was Nina didn’t feel safe or loved and when she started to use her gifts of singing and playing the piano to invoke change, that’s when her marriage changed. You see Nina’s husband wanted her to focus on touring and growing her career. That’s not what Nina Simone wanted, so she did that complete opposite. She spent her time in her younger years being a significant part of the black Renaissance. It’s easy now to look back at the 60’s and all of our leaders and activists like they were superheroes fighting the evils of this country. But in those times, being a superhero didn’t lead to you getting applauded and cheered for. Being a hero during the Civil Rights Movement meant you were willing to sacrifice your life, your freedom, your family, your dreams and your career. People like Dr. King, Marcus Garvey, Malcom X, Lorraine Hansberry and many more sacrificed everything, even their own piece of mind for the progression of their people. It was more important for Nina Simone to let People of Color know how beautiful and amazing they really were. I remember years ago I was watching an episode of Def Poetry Jam and the amazing actress Ruby Dee proclaimed that revolutionaries don’t get applauded, they get their legs cut off. Martyrdom. Let’s take a minute to think about what happen in the 60’s. The United States of America killed off all our leaders and for the outliers that made it through the 60’s, they either had to flee the country or deal with some harsh reality because of the backlash of slavery and Jim Crow. To be honest, I don’t know how any of our leaders maintained a sane mind while we were fighting for basic human rights. You see I studied my history and I know all that my people have been through. Everybody that was on the front line of change during the Civil Rights movement paid a major cost. They either loss their lives, their families, or their minds.

Nina Simone decided to sacrifice everything so that her people would know how great they really are. You see, it’s easy not to get up and stand for a cause. Back then when you stood for a cause, you had to put your life on the line. Medgar Evers got shot in front of his house for fighting for voting rights. Martin Luther King got shot on the balcony for being one of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement. Malcom X got killed for telling people of color to stand up for themselves. Fred Hampton got murdered in his bedroom for playing a pivotal role in the Black Panther Party. And many others gave their lives, so that we would be free. During the interview, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a reporter asked Nina Simone how she felt about the Civil Rights movement. Her response was that Civil Rights was dead. I think if you made through the Civil Rights movement, you really got to see the consequences for fighting and standing up for People of Color. If I was Nina Simone, I would have loss my mind as well. She watched all her friends either get murdered, flee the country or lose their mind or die because of a broken heart. I don’t think we fully understand the effects of slavery and Jim Crow. Poverty and oppression is socially and mentally constructed, in this country, to hold and control a particular race. That race is People of Color. Through everything that we have been through, it didn’t matter we still rise. Slavery didn’t work, Jim Crow didn’t work, war didn’t work, poverty didn’t work, murder didn’t work, taking us away from our families didn’t work. Trying to convince the world to hate People of Color didn’t work. No matter how much the system tries to hold us down, we will rise. It doesn’t matter what type adversity we face, history shows we will get through it. We will not just get through it, we will thrive and excel at every facet of our lives. We were really made in God’s image. My people’s DNA created every ethnicity that exist. We pushed society forward and introduced the world to science, magic, math and we give this planet color. People of color’s DNA is divine, and we can do anything we put our mind too. The one problem that effects every person of color is our lack of unconditional love for one another. The next thing is our lack of belief in self. You see people of color will continue to suffer if we stay disconnected. We could change the destiny of every person of color on this planet. You know how we do that, we start to respect and loom out for each other. We must remember that we are all one people and we share our people’s pain because we are all connected. That means that an injustice to one of us is an injustice to all of us. So, we must start fighting for each other. We can do so much more if we did it together.

Do you know what happened to Miss. Simone? She sacrificed her wealth, her piece of mind and her family for the culture. It was more important to Nina Simone to uplift her people and play her part in pushing the people forward. In my generation, our leaders are only willing to sacrifice but so much for the cause. We have become complacent and confused as a people. We didn’t get our rights and freedoms by being passive. We got our freedoms by sticking together and shaking up the system, until the system gave us what we wanted. So many of our leaders sacrificed so much, so that we would be able live out our dreams. We were not given anything, we had to take back our freedom.

It’s 2018 and we are still dealing with a lot of the problems that our great grandparents had dealt with. Jim Crow still exists; the system just changed the name to classism. If your credit score isn’t high enough and you don’t make a certain amount of money you can still be told that you can go into a certain establishment. Instead of people of color are getting murdered and hung on a tree, we get shot dead in the streets to lay for hours while people in our community watch. The backlash of slavery and Jim Crow has led to mental illness being a major problem in the Black community. So many of our young people are dealing with depression and anxiety, a direct result of the unstable environment that they grew up in. Poverty has been passed on through generations, like an inheritance for people of color. We have never got the time to heal and recover as a people. Every time we thought things were getting better this country through another obstacle for people of color to overcome. We made it through slavery and Jim Crow and then, this country pumped drugs and machine guns into our community. And then, there was a war on drugs in the United States of America and two million of color were incarcerated. That’s double the number of Black people enslaved at the height of the African slave trade.

Today, people of color still lack properly funded schools. We have more access to information than ever before, and most of us do nothing with it. We lack leaders that can bring people together so that we can change the culture. In my opinion, things have gotten worst but they say change comes on the brink of disaster. So, I believe that the darkness will be vanished by the light of spirits like myself. We will do for this country what our ancestors did for us. We will shake this system up until things start getting better. We wouldn’t be screaming Black Lives Matter, if everybody was getting treated equally. This country says that we are all treated equally but that’s not the reality of what’s happening. This planet isn’t going to get better by itself, we have to make it better. So, let’s take a minute to remember the late, great Nina Simone. She was a gift to us and I am forever grateful for what she did for our people. Her mission was to remind people of color how beautiful they really are. Despite all the adversity we have been through over the past 500 years, my people, please appreciate that resilience, and know that you don’t have to die to get to heaven. We can create paradise right here on earth, if we just started to love and support each other unconditionally. We are all family and when an injustice to one of us becomes an injustice to all of us this world will start to get better. There are still beautiful spirits like Nina Simone, all over the world, and it’s time we come together. Trying to do it by ourselves will kill us. Our people need us, they yearn for freedom and I want to be a part of the group that helps them get it. I believe in people, now and forever. We were the first people on this planet and we will be the last. It’s time we wake up and stop waiting to be saved. Nobody is going to save us but us. People of Color will forever be in God’s favor, so know that there will always be way for us to thrive and succeed on this planet. We just have to make that way together. Please never forget how amazing our people are. We have done so much to push this world forward, and we will do so much more.