Nina Simone Quiz on QuizRevolution

Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born in Tryon, North Carolina in 1933. She adopted the stage name Nina Simone in 1954 while working at a bar in Atlantic City. Her name was taken from "niña", meaning "little girl" in Spanish, and Simone for the French actress Simone Signoret, whom she had seen in the movie Casque d'or.

Nina Simone studied classical piano at the Julliard School of Music in New York as part of her plan to prepare to attend the Curtis Institute of Music. She took the entrance exam for the Curtis Institute’s classical piano program but was not accepted. She believed she had been rejected from the program because she was African-American. Simone received two honorary degrees in music and humanities from the University of Massachusetts and Malcolm X College. She preferred to be called "Dr. Nina Simone" after these honors were bestowed upon her. Only two days before her death, Simone was awarded an honorary diploma by the Curtis Institute.

Nina Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddam” in response to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Mississippi that killed four African-American children. This and other Nina Simone songs such as “Backlash Blues,” “Old Jim Crow,” “Four Women,” and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” became anthems for the Civil Rights movement. With the growing women's movement, "Four Women" and her cover of Sinatra's "My Way" became feminist anthems as well.

Nina Simone was often called the “High Priestess of Soul,” although she wasn't very fond of the title herself because it seemed to label her as a soul artist.

In 1959, Simone’s version of George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" gave her a Top 20 hit — which would, amazingly, prove to be the only Top 40 entry of her career.