HOPE Crew begins work at 30 East Livingston 

 

TRYON—On February 21, 1933 Eunice Kathleen Waymon (Nina Simone’s birth name) was born in Tryon, North Carolina in a small wooden home located at 30 East Livingston Street. By the age of four Simone had already displayed her musical talent by singing and playing the piano.  Simone graduated as the valedictorian of her high school class and with the help funds raised by the local community she was able to study during the summer of 1950 at Julliard in New York City. Nina Simone is remembered as one of the most influential artists and activists of the civil rights era in the United States.   

Simone was one of six children that shared the modest three room; 660 square foot home. East Livingston Street was located in the heart of the African-American community in Tryon during the middle of the 20th century.  In her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, Simone outlines a memory she had as a child, she recalls sitting on the kitchen counter in that house while using an empty jam-jar to cut dough to make biscuits. Simone’s family lived in a few different homes in Tryon during her early childhood, but 30 East Livingston is where her story began.  

In 2016, the vacant property went onto the market, at the time it was in a general state of disarray and in desperate need of repair. Four African-American visual artists; conceptual artist and painter Adam Pendleton, sculptor and painter Rashid Johnson, collagist and filmmaker Ellen Gallagher, and abstract painter Julie Mehretu, banded together to save the property. The group purchased the property in 2017 for $95,000 in order to save the structure and maintain a link to the history of Nina Simone.  

In 2018, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the childhood home of Nina Simone as a National Treasure.  That label has been bestowed fewer than 100 times across the country, but the National Trust felt that the home deserved that recognition. With that announcement, the National Trust began working on an 18-month campaign to raise funds and create a plan to restore the home.  

On Monday April 29, the National Trust Hands-On Preservation Experience (HOPE) Crew began work to restore Simone’s childhood home. The National Trust HOPE Crew was created in 2014 to provide young people preservation trades training in masonry repair, window restoration, and other skills at historic sites. As the name implies, the HOPE Crew teaches young people (typically between the ages of 16-24) how to perform a trade job focused on preservation through hands on work experience at active job sites. 

Philip Scott is one of the teachers from Schenck Job Corps Civilian Conservation Center. Scott oversees the painting trade course and currently has five of his students working on the Nina Simone childhood home project. “This program gives students an opportunity to learn a trade skill and helps them to find jobs,” Scott said. “Most of these students don’t have many other options besides being involved in a job core program.” Scott said that the group aims to have students involved in the program for two years in order to teach them all of the trade skills they would need to become professional painters working on historic buildings and preservation projects. There are seven HOPE Crew participants from the Schenk Job Corps program that are currently involved with the exterior restoration phase of the project. 

Director of the HOPE Crew, Monica Rhodes gave a statement about the Nina Simone childhood home restoration project, “We can’t think of a better way to celebrate HOPE Crew’s fifth anniversary than to commit new resources to engaging African American youth in the preservation of sites that tell our nation’s full history, beginning with the home of this iconoclastic singer and Civil Rights activist.” 

The Nina Simone childhood home restoration project has multiple donors and parties involved with the project. The Fund II Foundation founded by Robert F. Smith makes grants to 501(c)3 public charities and is a key contributor to the HOPE Crew. The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is a multi-year initiative led by the National Trust that partners with the Ford Foundation, the JPB Foundation, the Open Society Foundations and other partners to make lasting contributions to that elevate and maintain African American achievement and activism.  

Keri Fleming, the chief human resource officer at Benjamin Moore & Co. helped organize and arrange the donation of all of the painting supplies; primers, paints, brushes, rollers and other materials, that would be used to restore the childhood home of Nina Simone based on historically accurate samples. Henson Building Materials in Landrum, SC, made a partial donation on the lumber that is being used to replace the damaged siding and other sections of the home.  

At the time of writing, the National Treasure along with the four owners of the property have not made an official decision on what to do with the home once it is renovated and have determined that they will not begin renovating the interior of the home until a decision has been made. A public poll has been created to allow community input on what the home should become after it is completed, that poll can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/M9YN3SF.  

—By Samuel Robinson 

Sam.robinson@tryondailybulletin.com