"On that day in the fall of 2025, Waymon, an 81-year-old award-winning composer, said that memories flooded back of him playing organ in the house and cooking on the potbelly stove with his mother as a child in Tryon, North Carolina. He was overjoyed to see the large tree from his youth still standing in the yard."
"A small piece of the Great Depression-era linoleum sits on the restored wooden floor like an island of the past in a sea of the present. It does conjure up wonderful tears of joy in my heart and in my eyes when I stand in that house, on the porch, going into the rooms where the stove is, and I'm saying, Wow, this is actually real. The house is restored,' Waymon said. It's like time travel."
"The home was bought for $95,000 in 2017 by four Black artists behind the collective Daydream Therapy LLC the contemporary artist Adam Pendleton, the painter and sculptor Rashid Johnson, the abstract artist Julie Mehretu, and the collagist and film-maker Ellen Gallagher. For them, the structure is a assertion that Black history is worthy of investing in. The restoration comes at a time when historians and researchers say that the federal government is attempting to diminish the contributions of Black Americans."
Nina Simone lived in a 650-square-foot, three-room house in Tryon, North Carolina, from 1933 to 1937. The house stood vacant and decayed for more than two decades before restoration painted it white and conserved elements such as a shadow box holding rust-brown varnish and a fragment of Depression-era linoleum on the wooden floor. Dr Samuel Waymon, Simone's youngest sibling, returned in fall 2025 and recalled playing organ and cooking on a potbelly stove, reacting emotionally to the restored space. Four Black artists formed Daydream Therapy LLC to buy the home for $95,000 in 2017 as an assertion that Black history merits investment. Restoration occurs amid concerns that federal actions aim to diminish recognition of Black Americans; a presidential executive order directed the vice-president, JD Vance, to discontinue spending on programs or
Read at www.theguardian.com
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