Nina Simone first made a small appearance in the original sketches for the 1960s narrative that Judy Baca’s students drew in her 2006-7 Beyond the Mexican Mural class at the University of California Los Angeles. She was playing the piano next to a jukebox in the background of people doing a sit-in at Woolworth’s. In this original narrative, Nina was not named and did not have her own segment.

Judy wanted to feature Nina playing the piano, as opposed to just singing, because Nina herself had told her that she was first and foremost a pianist and wanted to be remembered that way. In one encounter between them, Nina also told Judy that she wanted to be featured on the Great Wall when it was expanded. To honor this request to its fullest, and to emphasize and tie in key concepts in adjacent segments, Judy decided to enlarge Nina’s portrait and make her playing “Mississippi Goddam” into a segment in itself when the Great Wall expansion began in late 2022.

Rio Diaz, Great Wall muralist and curator of SPARC, made new initial sketches of Nina in November 2022. In these, she introduced the idea of Nina singing notes that became Black fists with upside down American flags at their stems. She also drew marchers on a path that became a piano with detached hands playing it. In early December, Rio refined her portrait of Nina with new reference. In January, Judy began to work with Digital Artist Rachel Packer to adjust the segment, getting rid of the marchers and connecting the hands playing the piano to Nina’s body.

In February, Rachel found and drew new reference of Nina’s face and refined and cleaned up the segment using reference of Nina singing and playing piano.

In March, Judy decided she wanted Rachel to add the lyrics of Mississippi Goddam to help young people and people not familiar with the song understand its significance. The lyrics would also add context and power to the segments before and after — to Nina’s left, Non-Violent Resistance and the Lunch Counter Sit-Ins, and to Nina’s right, Malcom X and Martin Luther King posing around a clock with bodies pushing the hands forward and backward. These bodies represent the people participating in forms of resistance to injustice and the people trying to stop or slow them down.

In April, Rachel further developed and refined the path, keys, staff, and flags.

In May, Rio’s coloration of the segment, which came to include Malcom X’s portrait and part of the clock he leans against, appeared in the Great Wall of Los Angeles exhibition at the Jeffrey Deitch gallery.