Sylva, NC: City Lights Bookstore
Sun, Oct 04
|City Lights Bookstore
W. Jason Miller presents Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood: Nina Simone, Langston Hughes, and the Birth of Black Power
Time & Location
Oct 04, 2026, 1:00 PM
City Lights Bookstore, 3 E Jackson St, Sylva, NC 28779, USA
About the event
R. Jason Miller will visit City Lights on Sunday, October 4th at 1:00pm to share his new book, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood: Nina Simone, Langston Hughes, and the Birth of Black Power.
The story behind the Priestess and the Poet
On March 24, 1965, Nina Simone performed at a rally for twenty-five thousand people on the last night of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march. Though luminaries like Martin Luther King Jr., Mahalia Jackson, and Dick Gregory were in attendance, it was Langston Hughes, celebrated poet and leader of the Harlem Renaissance, who was the singer’s closest confidant and supporter. They had one of the most important—yet unheralded—friendships of the Black Power era.
Simone’s performance on that Montgomery night catapulted her into a lead role in the civil rights movement, with Hughes as her guide. InDon’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, W. Jason Miller offers a riveting history of…