Florence Mills and Ethel Waters
Florence Mills and Ethel Waters are two extremely talented women known for their talent in the music business, despite their gender. Both of these women began their careers different ways; however, both faced many struggles throughout their journeys. Florence Mills was considered one of the most successful entertainers of the 1920’s. She was born Florence Winfrey on January 25th, 1895 in the Washington D.C. slums . Her parents were both born into slavery in Amherst County, Virginia. They both worked in the tobacco industry until a depression in the industry when they moved to Lynchburg, Washington, D.C. Ethel Waters is known to be the first Negro woman to star in a Broadway play and one of the defining black talents of the Jazz Age. Since she was born in Chester Pennsylvania on October 31st 1896, Ethel Waters, born Ethel Perry, has been fighting the forces working against her. At the age of 6, she fought off typhoid fever and pneumonia. Ethel was raised by her grandmother in the slums of Chester and Philadelphia and was alone a lot throughout her childhood. At the age of 13, Ethel was forced into an arranged marriage with a man who beat her daily. Eventually, she left him and found work in hotels and apartment houses as a substitute dishwasher, waitress, and cleaning woman (Knaack, 25). She worked to support her sick mother who always regretted the birth of her child. Both of these women were faced with many overpowering obstacles in their lives, but they managed to transcend them and become popular female African American performers.
