Sun in the sky nina simone biography

Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born on February 21st 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina, USA, the sixth of eight children (four boys and four girls). Early on in life she revealed a prodigious musical talent playing the piano and singing with her sisters in their mother's choir at the local church.

In 1939 at the age of six, a benefactor paid for her first piano lessons. 

Eunice made so much progress that in 1943, when she was ten, she gave her first piano recital at the town library. There she not only experienced her first applause, but also had her first encounter with racism: during the recital her parents were removed from the first row to accommodate some whites.

This episode was a traumatic experience for her and may be the origin of her commitment to the fight for freedom and civil rights. 

With the financial help of some local supporters, Eunice left North Carolina in 1950 and attend a summer course at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, the same school that Mil