Music legend Nina Simone used her art to draw attention to injustice many times over the course of her career.
After a bombing that killed four Black girls at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, she wrote the song “Mississippi Goddam.”
That song is the inspiration for the title of the latest serialized story from the podcast “Reveal.”
In “Mississippi Goddam: The Ballad of Billy Joe,” host Al Letson takes a look at the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Billy Joe Johnson, a young football star living in the Deep South.
It also explores what his story says about race and justice in America over a dozen years later.
Copyright 2021 WAMU 88.5
