Ethel Waters
*On this date in 1939, "The Ethel Waters Show," a variety special, appeared on NBC. The new medium at the time of development was called television.
On The Ethel Waters Show, Waters, along with Black actresses Fredi Washington and Georgette Harvey, performed a dramatic sequence from her hit play Mamba's Daughters. Also appearing in various skits were actors Philip Loeb and Joey Faye. Waters, midway in what would be a long, turbulent, and illustrious career, had become the first African American to star in her own program on television. Ethel Waters would return to television eleven years later as the star of Beulah.
As such, she would find herself saddled with the role of a warmhearted maid that misused her talents and, more often than not, distressed the actress herself. But her presence led the way for everything of color to come over the next half-century.
Africana The Encyclopedia of the African and
African American Experience
Editors: Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Copyright 1999
ISBN 0-465-0071-1
