Remarks:
This song came out in 1964. She sang it at Selma, she sang it at Carnegie Hall. It became a civil rights anthem. It is one of her best-known songs, but it never charted.
Simone:
“When I heard about the bombing of the church in which the four little black girls were killed in Alabama, I shut myself up in a room and that song happened. Medgar Evers had been recently slain in Mississippi. At first I tried to make myself a gun. I gathered some materials. I was going to take one of them out, and I didn’t care who it was. Then Andy, my husband at the time, said to me, ‘Nina, you can’t kill anyone. You are a musician. Do what you do.’ When I sat down the whole song happened. I never stopped writing until the thing was finished.”
She wrote it in the style of a Broadway show tune.
See also:
- Selma
- Medgar Evers
- The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing
- songs, the 1960s
- Nina Simone
- Trailer: Nina
Lyrics:
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
Alabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Alabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Can’t you see it
Can’t you feel it
It’s all in the air
I can’t stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
Alabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
This is a show tune
But the show hasn’t been written for it, yet
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day’s gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don’t belong here
I don’t belong there
I’ve even stopped believing in prayer
Don’t tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I’ve been there so I know
They keep on saying ‘Go slow!’
But that’s just the trouble
‘Do it slow’
Washing the windows
‘Do it slow’
Picking the cotton
‘Do it slow’
You’re just plain rotten
‘Do it slow’
You’re too damn lazy
‘Do it slow’
The thinking’s crazy
‘Do it slow’
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don’t know
I don’t know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
I made you thought I was kiddin’
Picket lines
School boy cots
They try to say it’s a communist plot
All I want is equality
For my sister my brother my people and me
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you’d stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You’re all gonna die and die like flies
I don’t trust you any more
You keep on saying ‘Go slow!’
‘Go slow!’
But that’s just the trouble
‘Do it slow’
Desegregation
‘Do it slow’
Mass participation
‘Do it slow’
Reunification
‘Do it slow’
Do things gradually
‘Do it slow’
But bring more tragedy
‘Do it slow’
Why don’t you see it
Why don’t you feel it
I don’t know
I don’t know
You don’t have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Source: Songfacts.
Abagond 
She’s unbelievable, so powerful, nobody sings like she does and that piano work is OMG. I love piano, it’s my favorite instrument. I think she wanted to be a concert pianist but that didn’t happen.This version says it is live New York, and yet it’s so different from the live version filmed in Holland. Maybe people think it is weird cuz I am white but I could listen to this song a million times and love her more each time.
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The images in the YouTube video reflect the turbulent time in America during the Jim Crow era and black people protesting against social injustice. “You can’t help it. An artist duty, as far as i’m concerned, is to reflect the times. Nina Simone quote. Well she was an artist whose art mirrored the times. In this time you can feel the passion and anger in her voice in this song. She was a true activist for sure. She was a brave woman i am surprised the white supremacist didn’t try to come for her for speaking out. If white folks were losing their minds about Beyonce and Formation, i wonder if Miss Simone were alive today singing about Black lives matter white people’s heads would explode and there would be self combustion of their bodies because they work themselves into such a frenzy like the cartoon images on television. Miss Nina was truly a great artist.
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a truly moving song. It’s rhythm seems to be re-echoed to this day.
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@vanishingpoint
///Maybe people think it is weird cuz I am white but I could listen to this song a million times and love her more each time.///
Why? It is a great song by a great performer with a great voice, singing for the good cause. Why then should it be weird that you like it?
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@Jeff Eberfeld. Hmm, maybe you missed the point of this piece. And this version that Abagond posted is powerful in a very visual way because of the addition of the photography, but, she is somewhat singing under the wire for me. I learn a lot here, from Abagond and many posters, and I always wondered about this song, because the one I saw was live and it was in a room of white people. I didn’t realize that it was in Holland. Its a musically much more moving version, way more than this version from New York. And most of the white people that I have known would not like this song, she’s telling it. Here is the link to the version from (i think) Holland.( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVQjGGJVSXc)
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I’ve looked it up.
The Nina Simone concert was broadcast in the Netherlands on television on Christmas, 1965.
Reviews in the Dutch papers of the broadcast vary from “We would have preferred to hear more of her protest songs” (left-wing-media), and “born artist Simone puts a spell on the audience with a touching performance” (neutral media) to “we do not understand why jazz-singer Nina Simone had to be the main attraction at Christmas (without any alternative at the other channel)” (right-wing-media).
So there were no exploding heads in the Netherlands back then. However, I do not doubt that the Dutch (including me) are/were missing some points concerning the songs of Nina Simone.
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And another thing: there was a “for airplay”-verson of the song, in which the word “goddam” was replaced by the whistle of a cuckoo. It was done to mock the DJs who boycotted the record for the word “goddam.”
So four little black girls were killed in Alabama, Medgar Evers had been slain in Mississippi, but to some, the thing that is really to worry about is profane language on the radio.
Talking about priorities here.
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@Jeff Elberfeld
Good point, Jeff Elberfeld. Funny how some people get wrapped up in
minutiae.
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