Nina Simone in 1982 (Photo: Roland Godefroy, CC BY-SA 3.0)
TRYON, N.C. (AP) — The childhood home of iconic musician and civil rights activist Nina Simone will be indefinitely preserved in North Carolina. The National Trust for Historic Preservation announced Tuesday that its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, in partnership with World Monuments Fund and Preservation North Carolina, recently secured permanent protection of the singer-songwriter’s childhood home in Tryon. The legal agreement binds all current and future owners to permanently protecting the building’s “authentic character.” The house can be renovated, but it cannot be demolished. The Trust said Simone taught herself piano in the wooden cottage as a young girl in the 1930s. Her music helped define the civil rights movement. She died in 2003 at the age of 70.
