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The Extraordinary Life of Nina Simone was Tragic and Empowering

Tim Flight September 16, 2019 26 min

Nina Simone - Jazz — Nina Simone in October 1969. Consequence of Sound

11. She refused to pay her taxes in protest at the Vietnam War

Protest march against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC, November 1965. New Yorker

‘You raise my taxes, freeze my wages/ and send my son to Vietnam’ raged Nina in Backlash Blues. Like many left-leaning Americans in the 1960s, Nina was dead against American involvement in the Vietnam War, which inspired widespread protests both in music and on the streets. The draft system targeted the lower classes and ethnic minorities, quite apart from the horrors of war itself, so it is not hard to see why Nina was so critical of the conflict. In protest, she refused to pay any taxes to fund what she saw as a racist and immoral conflict.

Written by

Tim Flight

I am a freelance historical and literary writer based in West Yorkshire, UK. I read for a funded PhD in English at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) and graduated in 2016. I am a former lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. My publications include peer-reviewed articles in academic publications, and pieces in mainstream magazines such as History Today and Fortean Times. For more information, please see www.drflight.co.uk

The Extraordinary Life of Nina Simone was Tragic and Empowering

11. She refused to pay her taxes in protest at the Vietnam War

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