The Story Behind The Song: Nina Simone and her anthem ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’
As far as anthems go, there were perhaps none more potent and powerful in the roster of Nina Simone than ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’. That’s quite the statement when you think about it, because Simone largely spent a lifetime pushing those types of songs into the hearts of her community as well as around the world, but something about that 1970 song captured the very crux of an entire movement.
However, although it became one of the standout hits in Simone’s songbook and of her sonic legacy at large, its origin story was fittingly one very much based in community and raising the voices of other people around her. It goes without saying that, much in the spirit of the song, being a young Black person trying to make your way in the world during the height of the civil rights movement was a hard-fought task, but Simone was set on acknowledging where strides had been made.
This was mainly centred on the pioneering playwright and personal friend of Simone’s, Lorraine Hansberry, who was the first Black female author to ever have a play appear on Broadway. Her work, most predominantly the 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, was a massive proponent in highlighting the struggles of Black people when racial segregation still plagued America, but it was when tragedy struck that Simone found it most important to continue her legacy.
Devastatingly, Hansberry was struck down in her prime at the age of just 34 from pancreatic cancer – but although she only lived a short life, she had already created enough mastery to transcend generations. Indeed, it was in the title of her final play, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, that Simone found the inspiration for her own song – not just to honour Hansberry’s life and legacy in the moment, but to make sure it passed down the generations to come.
She explained in a previous interview with Wired: “The night she passed away, I decided to make it into a song. I called my lyricist and I said, ‘Can you put music to Young, Gifted and Black?’ and we put it to music that night. Then later, it was claimed the Black anthem of American Black [people] all over the United States.”
Indeed, it was, as the message of Black excellence and hope began to transcend the civil rights movement because it offered a beacon of positivity amid the battles still to be won. The new expression was that “To be young, gifted and black is where it’s at,” and from there, the tidal wave legacy of the song was one that not only cemented Simone in the golden leagues, but remembered Hansberry and all those who had given their lives to the cause along the way.
Of course, the pressure of creating an anthem of the civil rights movement wasn’t something that weighed lightly on Simone’s shoulders. When asked about its influence in the same Wired interview, she quipped back, “Darling, it’s taken up 50 years of my life!” before going on to share some “regrets” as she no longer wanted to be associated with the movement in her latter years, but nevertheless, her presence never waned. This was a woman who single-handedly spearheaded its musical soundtrack, and no one could help but bow down at her feet.
This was reflected in the journey that ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’ took in the preceding years to be claimed by other artists, all clamouring and proud to lay their own voices onto Simone’s original anthem. Everyone from Aretha Franklin in the 1970s to Michael Kiwanuka in the 2020s has taken the song on, testament to not only its power but its ability to continue to move society in the present day, some half a century on from its first release.
But it’s true what they say – no one does it like Simone. As such, although ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’ was a song intended to honour the life and legacy of one influential playwright, the singer’s commitment of those words to music gave it a far greater voice than it could have ever achieved on the stage alone.
Being “young, gifted and Black” may mean “your soul’s intact”, but it also gave a view to the rest of the world on what a joy that truly is.
