Nina Simone

CTL-E-5234 · Person · musician · 1933–2003

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

Nina Simone (born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina; died April 21, 2003, in Carry-le-Rouet, France) was an American singer, pianist, and civil-rights activist. Classically trained, she studied briefly at Juilliard and was denied admission to the Curtis Institute — a rejection she believed was racial — then began singing in an Atlantic City nightclub in 1954 under a stage name. Her 1958 hit “I Loves You, Porgy” launched a career of more than forty albums blending jazz, blues, gospel, folk, and classical music. After the 1963 Birmingham church bombing she wrote “Mississippi Goddam”; “Four Women” and “Young, Gifted and Black” made her one of the movement's defining voices. She is remembered by the honorific “High Priestess of Soul.” She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

The record

• Also known as: Eunice Kathleen Waymon, Eunice Waymon

Notes

Staged 2026-10-15 under CTL-GOV-006; Gate A clear (incl. birth-name variants Eunice Waymon / Eunice Kathleen Waymon); Gate B met (2 authoritative sources). CTL treatment: I Put a Spell on You review scored 85 (2026-10-01); Short “Mississippi Goddam and the Movement” in CTL's “The Revolution Will Not Be Forgotten” series, reported live 2026-10-15; subject of 31 CTL research files per the 2026-10-15 corpus gap scan. NO relationship staged: no sourced tie to a staged graph anchor was located — documented Chicago performances were at the Civic Opera House (1967) and the Chicago Theatre (2001), neither a staged anchor, and she never recorded for Chess or Motown. Statistics: none carried — no single authoritative count verified.

Sources

• Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, “Nina Simone” (inducted 2018) — https://rockhall.com/inductees/nina-simone/ (primary source)
• Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies (Oxford Academic), “Nina Simone” — https://academic.oup.com/reference/62284/reference-article/551999971

Watch the Short

• Nina Simone — I Put a Spell on You (1965)
• Nina Simone — Mississippi Goddam and the Movement

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Record CTL-E-5234 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 2 sources (1 primary) · CTL research: PPL-001.
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