University of Texas Acquires Collection of Papers From Black Performer Ethel Waters

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has recently acquired a collection of materials on Ethel Waters, a pioneering twentieth-century Black singer and actress. Born in 1896 as a result of the rape of her teenage Black mother Louise Anderson, Waters was raised in poverty by her grandmother in Philadelphia. Speaking of her difficult upbringing in her autobiography, His Eye Is on the Sparrow (originally published by Doubleday & Company, Inc. in 1951), Waters stated, “I never was a child.” After leaving an abusive marriage she began in 1910 at the age of 13, Waters was ultimately offered professional work as a singer at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore following a performance in a nightclub on her seventeenth birthday. She then began her groundbreaking career in radio, theater, television, and film. In the 1920s and 1930s, Waters recorded several notable blues songs, such as “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Stormy Weather.” In 1939, The Ethel Waters Show premiered, making her the first Black performer to star in their own television special. Ten years later, she became the second Black actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the 1949 film Pinky.  The new...