The house, a modest house on pillars with entrance porch and wooden plank facades, is nestled on a hill in the small town of Tryon, in a rural county of North Carolina, in the southeastern United States.

It was on sale in 2017 when four artists, Julie Mehretu, Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson and Adam Pendleton, bought it for $95,000 so it wouldn't disappear.

"Nina Simone fought for an inclusive and diverse America," Pendleton said. Allowing "people to see and visit" his birthplace, "is a way to keep his legacy, his music, alive for future generations," he told AFP, inside the Pace Gallery in New York, where the works for sale were exhibited this week.

Nina Simone's childhood home, photographed on September 29, 2022 in Tryon, North Carolina (image made available by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Pace Gallery) © Nancy PIERCE / National Trust for Historic Preservation/AFP

"First gesture"

"In the last five years, we've raised $500,000," used in part for early consolidation and painting, adds Brent Leggs, director of a specific program for African-American heritage at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which works with artists.

But the 60-square-meter house still needs funding to become a permanent site, open to visits and cultural events.

Brent Leggs, executive director of the African-American Heritage Action Fund, at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, stands in front of one of the works sold to restore Nina Simone's birthplace, May 19, 2023 © ANGELA WEISS / AFP

To give a helping hand, the artists have gathered eleven works, including paintings by Cecily Brown or Sarah Sze, whose sale will feed the project.

The auction, organized by Pace and Sotheby's, takes place online since May 12 and until Monday. Brent Leggs hopes to make $ 2 million, including thanks to a gala Saturday night in New York, supported by tennis champion Venus Williams.

"It's Nina Simone's legacy that allowed people like me to be visible," the first black player to become world number one said in a video.

Black Lives Matter

Nina Simone, whose songs make up the playlists of the Black Lives Matter movement, had a complex, often difficult relationship with the United States, where she was born in 1933, during racial segregation.

In Tryon's three-room home, where she lived her early years with her parents and siblings, little Eunice Waymon -- her real name -- was steeped in music, began playing the piano at age three, and excelled under the lessons of "Miss Mazzie," an English teacher who passed on her passion for Johann Sebastian Bach.

Paintings on display at the Pace Gallery on May 19, 2023 in New York City for an auction to fund the restoration of the birthplace of soul and jazz diva and civil rights activist Nina Simone © ANGELA WEISS / AFP

But her dream of becoming a classical concert performer was shattered at the front door of the Philadelphia Conservatory, a failure she would attribute all her life to racism.

His career marries in the 60s the struggle for civil rights of African-Americans, sometimes with a radical speech, sometimes in songs, with "Mississippi Goddam", response to the deadly burning of a church in Alabama by members of the Ku Klux Klan (1963), or with the poignant "Why? (The king of love is dead)", which she performed three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King (1968).

She eventually left the United States and lived her last years in southern France, where she died in 2003.

Artist Adam Pendleton, who bought Nina Simone's birthplace to turn it into a cultural venue, speaks on May 17, 2023 at the Pace Gallery in New York, which exhibits works sold at auction to finance the Ed JONES / AFP project ©.

According to Brent Leggs, the Tryon home could be open to the public as early as 2024. "Our country is beginning to understand that we need to preserve our entire history, and recognize and celebrate the diversity of our country," he added.

"An exciting time for historic protection," he said.

© 2023 AFP