Ethel Waters
Jazz Singer
Jazz and blues singer who was also a stage and screen actress and who sang "Stormy Weather" and "Am I Blue?"
When she was seventeen, she attended a costume party at a nightclub where some of the guests convinced her to sing, helping her to land her first gig.
She was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award.
She married Merritt Purnsley in 1910, then Clyde Edward Matthews in 1929, and then Ed Mallory in 1938.
Waters released the 1933 film Rufus Jones for President, which starred Sammy Davis Jr.