Quote

In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.

Ethel Waters

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Ethel Waters
Age: 80 †
Born: 1896
Born: October 31
Died: 1977
Died: September 1
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Singer
Stage Actor
Vocalist
Chester
Pennsylvania
Live
Six
Without
Mom
Whole
Dollars
Hard
Husband
Never
Week
Life
Five
Place
Find
Earned

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Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.
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After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.
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My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
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I never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.
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I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up.
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There had been lots of crises in my life. And there was plenty of spunk and battle cry still left in me.
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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
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I wanted to be with the kind of people I'd grown up with, but you can't go back to them and be one of them again, no matter how hard you try.
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The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
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My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
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All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
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Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.
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Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.
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I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
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I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
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There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
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Today I blame only certain agents for my long eclipse as a public entertainer.
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