Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

19. I Have Become More Militant ~ 1970

19. I Have Become More Militant ~ 1970 ~ N ina and Andy split up early in 1970. On February 14 Amsterdam News columnist Jesse H. Walker reported in his Theatricals column (usually at least a week behind events) that the couple had separated “and a divorce may be in the works.” A front-page story in The Philadelphia Tribune February 21 announced that “Nina Simone Leaves Mate Who Earns $100,000 as Her Personal Manager.” Andy had moved to a midtown Manhattan apartment , and though he did not comment on his income, he insisted there was no “love triangle” involved. “It’s simply a matter of personal difference.” Rumors of his infidelities persisted nonetheless. Years later Nina might have forgotten exactly when she left Andy, but she did not forget the reason. “As usual he refused to accept that I needed rest,” she wrote in her memoir, “and I realized he wasn’t even sure I meant it. That did it.” Lisa was staying with Andy’s mother, leaving Nina to do as she wished. “So I walked out on Andy. I left my wedding ring on the bedroom dressing table and caught a plane to Barbados.” Nina maintained that she didn’t mean her abrupt departure to signal an immediate end but only that she needed “a vacation from my marriage for a while.” Andy described a different scenario. He had been understanding and attentive even in the most troubled times, and now he had had enough. When Nina worried about her mood swings, he readily agreed to pay for medical testing at a prominent New York hospital even though, he remembered in 2006, the doctors “came up with zilch.” He maintained that Nina wanted as big a career as he wanted her to have and that she blamed him whenever they came up short. During one argument Andy could barely contain himself. He told Nina that unless she wanted to “turn tricks,” there was no money if she didn’t perform. “You gotta do the mathematics.” He did agree with Nina on one thing: she left abruptly, and he had no idea where she was. Nina was surprised that Andy didn’t track her down. “I assumed he was being proud—just like a man—and wanted me to make the first move. So I caught a plane back to New York,” she wrote. “I got home to Mount Vernon and found the house dark, nobody home.” Even that blackboard where they had charted her career had vanished . “I’d left Andy in order to make a point about our marriage, and now he’d put up his hands and said, ‘OK, if that’s the way you want it, I quit.’ ” At least temporarily the house was hers. Neither Andy nor Nina apparently stopped to think about the effect of their separation on Lisa. The confusion of that moment stayed with her for years. One day her father was there, “and the next day he wasn’t,” she recalled decades later. “No one explained anything to me.” For the short term, she went to live with relatives in North Carolina. “to be young, gifted and black” was still riding the charts, and a radio station in Baltimore even sponsored a contest inviting anyone between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five to write an essay or poem about what it means to be young, gifted, and black. The winner, Roland E. Slocum Jr., received an all-expensepaid trip to New York and a ticket to see Nina in a weekend perfori have become more militant · 239 mance at the Gate. They met later, a moment captured in an Amsterdam News photograph and reprinted in other black newspapers. Nina liked the way the symbolism connected her to Lorraine: she had taught Nina, and now, through her music, Nina passed on those lessons. While she sorted out the breakup of her marriage, RCA released a new album drawn from the Philharmonic Hall concert the previous October. Borrowing from that Brooklyn Academy of Music evening nearly two years before, the label called it Black Gold and created a cover modeled from the original publicity poster, which had shown Nina in a silhouette profile, her hair in a full Afro. Her name and the album title were within the outline of her Afro, suggesting not inaccurately that the person and the music were one. “I’m very proud...