Quote by Nina Simone: “I'll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.”

Freedom is not just the legal right to go somewhere or do something — it is the lived experience of moving through the world without dread. For Black Americans in the 1960s, formal civil rights still coexisted with constant threat; Simone named the gap between legal and experiential freedom.

Simone said this in an interview in 1964, a year after her furious protest song 'Mississippi Goddam' was written in response to the murder of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls. The civil rights movement was at a peak of violent confrontation, and Simone articulated what liberation would actually feel like rather than what it would look like on paper.

American singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist whose music spanned jazz, blues, and classical forms. Her songs including 'Mississippi Goddam' and 'Four Women' made her one of the most politically committed musicians of the civil rights era.