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Measure Her Right: The Tragedy of Ethel Waters

  • Chapter
No Surrender! No Retreat!

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Abstract

These ungrammatical but powerful words of Mama Younger admonish all who would criticize the singer/dramatic actor Ethel Waters. I saw her in person only once. It was 1972 in El Paso, Texas, at the First Baptist Church on Montana Street. The Billy Graham Crusade was in town. By then, she toured with Graham as a singer. She was 75 and looked a lot older. Her soft and bountiful snow-white hair formed a gentle halo around the head of a woman who was no saint. Her body was, by then, trapped in 350 pounds of flesh. Her finances were strained, and her health clearly frail with the illnesses—cancer, high blood pressure, and diabetes—that ultimately claimed her. A gifted singer and a dramatic actor many praised, Ethel Waters lived a tragic life.

When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

—A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry

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Authors
  1. Glenda E. Gill
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© 2000 Glenda E. Gill

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Gill, G.E. (2000). Measure Her Right: The Tragedy of Ethel Waters. In: No Surrender! No Retreat!. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05361-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05361-9_4

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-62002-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-05361-9

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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