Backlash Blues

Nina Simone performing the Langston Hughes penned, Backlash Blues at Montreux, 1976.

Simone first released the song on Nina Sings the Blues  in 1967, a year that also saw Hughes' passing at age 65, and the publication of his final book of prose, The Panther and the Lash. The collection includes Justice, a nearly fifty year old poem that could have been written this afternoon.

Justice

That justice is a blind goddess

Is a thing to which we black are wise:

Her bandage hides two festering sores

That once perhaps were eyes.

 - Langston Hughes