Nina Simone: Born in Tryon

The town of Tryon, North Carolina, is the birthplace of one of the twentieth century's most uncompromising artists. Nina Simone was born here on February twenty-first, nineteen thirty-three, the sixth of eight children in a Methodist family. A piano prodigy, she trained seriously in classical music and once dreamed of becoming the first Black concert pianist at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia.

When Curtis rejected her, she turned to jazz, folk, blues, and eventually became something entirely her own. Songs like Mississippi Goddam, Four Women, and To Be Young, Gifted and Black made her a voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She said herself: it is an artist's duty to reflect the times.

She died April twenty-first, two thousand three. This marker, sculpted by Zenos Frudakis and installed in two thousand ten, stands near where that duty first took root.