Nina Simone: Constructing a Legacy

Nina Simone’s statue in Tryon, North Carolina

There’s a bronze statue of a Black woman in downtown Tryon, North Carolina. Her likeness bears the same expression the subject often wore in life: a kind of fixed, half resigned, half-exasperated glare. The statue sits in a small town square, its hands poised over an undulating keyboard. In its bronze heart sits half of Nina Simone’s ashes.