The president, LBJ, went on TV to declare 7 April a Day of National Mourning. This was the same man who had… — Nina Simone
The president, LBJ, went on TV to declare 7 April a Day of National Mourning. This was the same man who had ordered thousands of US citizens - black and white - overseas to die in a foreign jungle while he ignored the war at home. Our president was obviously a man of violence. Why shouldn't the rest of us be the same?
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More from this book
What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.
As I became more knowledgeable I came to my own conclusions about separatism. In the white man's world the black man would always lose out, so the idea of a separate black nation, whether it was in America or in Africa, made sense. But I didn't believe that there was any basic difference between the races - whoever is on top uses whatever means they can to keep the other down, and if black America was on top they'd use race as a way of oppressing whites in exactly the way they themselves were oppressed. Anyone who has power only has it at the expense of someone else and to take that power away from them you have to use force, because they'll never give it up from choice. That is what I came to believe, and it was a big step forward in my political thinking because I realized that what we were really fighting for was the creation of a new society. When I had started out in the movement all I wanted were my rights under the Constitution, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that no matter what the President or the Supreme Court might say, the only way we could get true equality was if America changed completely, top to bottom. And this change had to start with my own people, with black revolution.
Right now I'm as close to happy as I can be without a husband to love, I started to work on this book, looking back over a life which, after thinking about for months and months, I have no regrets about. Plenty of mistakes, some bad days, and, most resonant of all, years of joy - hard, but joyous all the same - fighting for the rights of my brothers and sisters everywhere; America, Africa, all over the world, years where pleasure and pain were mixed together. I knew then, and I still do, that the happiness I felt, and still feel, as we moved forward together was of a kind that very few people ever experience. But what I like most of all about the way things are now is that I have enough financial security to know that I can't be pushed into doing anything I don't want to. When I release a new album or video it'll be because I'm proud and want to share it - no other reason. (p 175)
