February 21st is one of the heaviest days of Black History Month.

In 1933, Nina Simone was born. Exactly 32 years later, on her birthday in 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom.

This wasn’t just a coincidence of two Black titans

In the late 1950s, Malcolm and Nina were neighbors in Mount Vernon, New York. They ran in the same circles, and Nina was close friends with Malcolm’s wife, Betty Shabazz.

For years, Nina’s only goal was to be a classical concert pianist, she wanted to play Bach at Carnegie Hall

But the escalating violence of the 1960s with the murders of Medgar Evers and the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham fundamentally changed her.

The assassination of her friend Malcolm X on her 32nd birthday was the final straw.

She stopped trying to be the entertainer the establishment wanted.

She threw her entire career into the movement. She wrote "Mississippi Goddam" and "Four Women," and she moved from concert halls to the front lines, performing at the Selma to Montgomery march just weeks after Malcolm’s assassination.

This shift cost her everything. The industry blacklisted her, her records were pulled from radio, and the FBI put her under constant surveillance.

The system killed Malcolm, but they created a voice in Nina they could not control.