Ethel Waters - Nominee

“We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.”

 – Ethel Waters

Ethel Waters, born in crushing poverty, escaped to Baltimore and began a new life as “Sweet Mama Stringbean,” a slender and glamorous blues singer on the southern vaudeville circuit. Her technical and emotional agility quickly made her one of the major stars of the Harlem Renaissance era, where she was also well-known for being “in the life” with dancer Ethel Williams. She was the first singer to confront racism in a popular song (“Suppertime”) in 1933, the same year she introduced “Stormy Weather” at the Cotton Club. Waters was the first black woman to receive equal billing with white stars on Broadway. In Hollywood she would also become the first black woman to establish herself as a major American dramatic actress and only the second African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award – for her supporting role in the film “Pinky” (1949). In 1950 she won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award as Best Actress for her luminous performance on Broadway as the maid Berenice in Carson McCullers’s “Member of the Wedding,” a role she reprised on film to further acclaim two years later. In her later years Waters redefined herself as an evangelical Christian. She gave her last performances as a member of Billy Graham’s crusade. She died on September 1, 1977.