In celebration of Black History Month, we’ll be highlighting a diverse range of books, music, and art all written by Black American artists and authors, all of which celebrate and prioritize the 2025 theme, “ African Americans and Labor”.The 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans and Labor, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. Indeed, work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture. Be it the traditional agricultural labor of enslaved Africans that fed Low Country colonies, debates among Black educators on the importance of vocational training, self-help strategies and entrepreneurship in Black communities, or organized labor’s role in fighting both economic and social injustice, Black people’s work has been transformational throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. The 2025 Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor,” sets out to highlight and celebrate the potent impact of this work. (asalh.org)
Today we will be highlighting Mississippi Goddam by Nina Simone
Nina Simone’s consequential tune “Mississippi Goddam” debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1964, a time perfectly suited for and desperately in need of such a work. Black listeners resonated with the frustrated message and palpable anger wrapped up in a show-tune package. The raw emotion from the civil rights movement and the continued remembrance of the 16th St Church Bombing in Birmingham Alabama makes “Mississippi Goddam” a veritable time capsule from the era it was born into. As the name suggests, “Mississippi Goddam” focuses its attention on the southern states, where Jim Crow laws had made life for Black Southerners extremely difficult. This protest song represents a sharp political statement that undoubtedly has a place in the activism of today.
Stay tuned for a new work tomorrow!
