Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

11. Respect ~ December 14, 1961–December 1962

11. Respect ~ December 14, 1961–December 1962 ~ L angston Hughes brought Nina into the circle of black talent that headed to Lagos December 13. Their friendship had blossomed during the 1960 Newport festival, and ever since the two had kept in touch. Langston periodically sent Nina books along with an occasional invitation to dinner at his Manhattan apartment, these missives filled with the panache of his other writings. She was especially sorry to miss the one that featured homecooked “coon— not a possum but a COON,” Langston promised, “that a friend brought us from ‘Down South.’ ” The AMSAC meetings provided Nina entrée to New York’s black intellectuals, and it was hardly surprising that she was drawn to James Baldwin. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, had been acclaimed by both black and white critics, and some of the passages reminded Nina of the revival meetings she played for, when she had to keep up with all the testifiers. But Nina also understood the anger that bristled in Baldwin’s characters when he described the humiliations they endured every time they ventured from their insular world into the one dominated by whites. Nina found him mischievous and delightful, but she thought his eyes, large and round, “always made him look slightly sad.” In addition to Langston, her traveling companions to Africa included Olatunji; Odetta Gordon, a folksinger whom Nina occasionally saw around the Village; Brock Peters, a singer and actor with a compelling bass voice; jazz instrumentalist Randy Weston; the dancer-choreographer Geoffrey Holder; and Natalie Hinderas, the classical pianist who had the kind of career Nina so often said she wanted. If Nina was envious, she kept it to herself. She considered the adventure a party, even though she, like the others, was not getting paid. AMSAC could only cover the performers’ expenses. (One of the biggest problems was getting the headliner Lionel Hampton released from a booking in New York so that he could join the celebration in Lagos, albeit a day late. It cost the organization $1,000.) 122 · p r i n c e s s n o i r e Nina with, from left, Martha Flowers, Geoffrey Holder, Natalie Hinderas, and Brock Peters in Lagos, Nigeria, December 1961, for a conference sponsored by the American Society of African Culture (Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University) respect · 123 The group arrived at the Lagos airport shortly before midnight December 14 after a stopover in Rome. Spending an afternoon in one of Western Europe’s fabled cities and then landing six hours later in a country so rich in the imagination of many American blacks only heightened the anticipation. As the plane braked to a halt at the Lagos airfield, one of the musicians was moved to speak. “Well,” he said loud enough to be heard, “it only took three hundred years, but we’re back home at last.” Given the hour no one expected a big welcoming party, and certainly not any entertainment. So Nina and the others were astonished to hear the unmistakable sound of drums and then women singing songs of welcome when the plane door opened. The group had been waiting nearly three hours to greet the visitors but still looked fresh in ceremonial robes a fashion designer would envy. Nina was so enthralled with the scene that it seemed as though everything was unfolding in a bright noonday sun rather than the artificial lights that bathed the tarmac. “I knew I’d arrived somewhere important and that Africa mattered to me and would always matter,” she said. The trip in from the airport offered an African landscape dotted with symbols of American enterprise: Amoco, Standard Oil, Chase Manhattan, and Pepsi-Cola signs marked the way. The yellow fluorescent streetlamps along the road gave the signs and the buildings they were attached to an eerie cast. AMSAC member William Branch thought it all looked like a Broadway stage set. After the group settled into the Federal Palace Hotel in downtown Lagos and ventured out on their first full day, it was clear that the “bush telegraph ” had successfully spread the news of their arrival. Local men and women crowded the streets around the hotel, waving and clapping their hands. Children pulled away from their parents, jostling for a better look at the strangers. “We had interviews from sunup to sundown,” Odetta remembered . “The only...