The last time my parents and I gathered around the TV this excited for a night of politics was that day in 2008, when my little eight-year-old self got to watch my brothers see someone who looks like them ascend to the helm of the nation that promised smoke and dust and death for their race. There was a black man who took the systemic imprisonment, the perseverance, the weight of American culture on the backs of black stars, the conflict of existence in a country that hates him but cannot live without him, and decided that yes, he would face all of it — those who wear pointed white hoods and pray for his death daily, and boys and girls who are entitled to nothing less than the best life the country can offer.
That moment is indelible and it cannot be denied, no matter what rights and wrongs Obama’s administration introduced. The image of a black man with his black wife and black daughters choosing and being chosen to lead the country that had built itself on the blood and bones of their ancestors; there is no better picture to show the results of bitter and battered activism over 400 years, nor the celebration of the multicultural America that breathes life into the city centre of my hometown Oakland, California, and many other immigrant and POC cities. Every time Obama chose to represent the US, the entire history of America played out on his skin and the shadow he cast on the oval office floors.
It is equally as undeniable that Trump represents the lasting legacy of slavery. His vicious rhetoric remind us more of the blight of the slave master and his army of wives, children, police officers, lawmakers, and presidents who counted their money and lashes of the whip with the same hand, yet denied the notion that their callouses may have something to do with the two. Slavery has been abolished for hundreds of years, but the continued demonization of black people has never been clearer.
So, how do we usher in this newest age? Are we no longer willing to bask in ignorant joy because a black person was elected, without doing the actual work to understand why that is so significant? Can we vow that we will never again let white supremacy run rampant and unchallenged, like an insurrectionist who waves a Confederate flag in the US Capitol or a gunman who murders worshippers for not being as white and “Christian” as he?
That remains to be seen, as hopeful as the inauguration tonight made me feel. Though… there is one moment that struck a deeper cord with me. Madam Vice President Kamala Harris finished her remarks in front of the darkened pool stretched in front of the Washington Monument, lit by the flames honoring the unnecessary 400,000 dead by the unfathomable depths of Trump’s incompetence, and the camera panned to John Legend standing in front of his piano, the uninterrupted motion highlighted by the name of a singular artist who’s symbolism cannot go unnoticed; Nina Simone.
Simone was a veritable powerhouse in the American jazz and blues music industry. Theatres of people rose and fell for her, whites exalted and and hated her blackness for reasons ranging from jealousy to admiration to fear. Black folk spoke through her, and through her capture of the stage she spoke to and about them. And, like Kamala Harris, she was a first: a classically trained black female pianist in the white and elitist Juilliard, and eventually the stuffy grandeur of Carnegie Hall.
The problem with being the first of anything is there is no precedent bathed in traceable history; there are only the amalgamations of expectations ranging everywhere on the political spectrum, creating a nebulous and contradicting image of how a mysterious “first” should be. The same was true of Obama; to some, he could never do anything right, and yet whatever he ended up doing wrote history because of the simple fact that he was setting a never-before-used metric for other black presidents to relate themselves to, something other than the cursed and unspecific image of the undefined “first.” A “first” is expected to be perfect so that the messy void they fill dispels the naysayers that have thrown up barriers in the name of thinly veiled racism disguised as precedent.
Simone means more than symbolizing a first, however, because as striking as her voice felt, the novelty of it hit deeper with the righteous anger coloring her tone. The Birmingham church bombings in 1963 that killed four little black girls at Sunday school forced Simone’s hand, and she wrote “Mississippi Goddam.” Everything changed after that. She performed it for the march from Selma to Montgomery, she penned the truth and fury of blackness in Jim Crow into gospel and sang it for the entire country to reconcile with. She wrote “Backlash Blues” to drive her white, rich, old audience insane, and to, in her own words, “shake them up so bad that when they leave the nightclub… I want them to be to pieces” (What Happened, Miss Simone?). “Young, Gifted, and Black” gave a voice to a generation, a pride in affirmation and proclamation of the never before recognized black youth for their intelligence, talent, beauty, and confidence. I could write an entire essay on the tone-deaf rendition my high school put on of the musical Hair featuring Simone’s “I Got No, I Got Life,” — especially because the celebration of blackness Simone performed for the wounded self-confidence of her black peers went entirely unmentioned throughout the whole production.
Among those indescribably powerful songs that put to words suffering and dignity from 1619 to the civil rights movement was “I’m Feeling Good.” And the soul, the hope, the self-celebration, the pure energy from that utterly unquotable song settles stirring rage into a tightly clasped peace while her voice and the trumpets fill your soul with her salient concept of freedom. And it is that exact feeling that John Legend, one of the highly loved and celebrated modern black musicians, chooses to introduce the newest presidency to us.
I will not deny that Vice President Harris has a lot to make up for; her record in my home state of California as a part of the machinations of policing black and brown lives is tenuous at best. A lot people in my corner are skeptical, even unhappy, with her nomination, because to them she represents an outdated view of the police force, as it stands, as protectors and enforcers of the law. For those people, I am not asking them to be satisfied or even grateful. I am instead fascinated by the image that played across the screens of millions of houses everywhere, from far left bubbles to persecuted minority communities to first time voters to children, who’ve known nothing but Trump, seeing a black woman celebrated. The shadow of Nina Simone welcoming Harris into the oval office adequately illustrates the Simone-sized expectations Harris must live up to from people who want her to do better all the way to people who want her dead. It sets a tone of recognition for all she’s been through to make it this far, as a “first.”
John Legend’s effervescent, ardent, consuming, showstopping rendition of Nina Simon’s “I’m Feeling Good” at this moment in history, ushering out the appalling attempt to return to reconstruction America and welcoming with fresh and bated breath the first Madam Vice President, basks us all in the relief of the new dawn and new day Simone lauds.
I referenced (and highly recommend) the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? (directed by Liz Garbus) on Netflix. As Netflix has become more ubiquitous and thus accessible, I recommend getting to know Simone through this film. She is worth the whole hour and forty-five minutes (and more).
I also ask to be criticized, interrogated, corrected, and held to the highest possible standard an ally can hope to reach.