"New York is only 97 miles from Philadelphia but was the Big Time as no other American city has ever been"
About this Quote
New York doesn’t just sit up the road from Philadelphia; in Ethel Waters’s telling, it sits in a different dimension. The line snaps because it starts with a measurable fact - 97 miles, an easy train ride - then swerves into an emotional truth: distance in America isn’t only geography, it’s access. “The Big Time” isn’t a tourism slogan here. It’s the hard-edged shorthand working performers used for the place where talent could become livelihood, where a name could become a booking, where you could stop being regional and start being currency.
Waters knew that difference intimately. Coming up through vaudeville and early popular music, she moved through circuits where Philadelphia could mean respectable opportunity, but New York meant the center of gravity: bigger rooms, tougher crowds, better pay, faster churn, sharper competition. Her phrasing has the breathless awe of someone arriving and realizing the air is thinner - and the cool-eyed realism of someone who understands the cost of that altitude.
The subtext is also about who gets to define “American” success. For Black women entertainers in the early 20th century, New York’s “Big Time” carried contradictions: Harlem as a cultural engine, Broadway as a gatekeeper, acclaim as both invitation and trap. Waters compresses all of that into a single contrast. Ninety-seven miles becomes a class divide, a racial politics, a career gamble, and a myth of modernity you can almost hear humming behind the music.
Waters knew that difference intimately. Coming up through vaudeville and early popular music, she moved through circuits where Philadelphia could mean respectable opportunity, but New York meant the center of gravity: bigger rooms, tougher crowds, better pay, faster churn, sharper competition. Her phrasing has the breathless awe of someone arriving and realizing the air is thinner - and the cool-eyed realism of someone who understands the cost of that altitude.
The subtext is also about who gets to define “American” success. For Black women entertainers in the early 20th century, New York’s “Big Time” carried contradictions: Harlem as a cultural engine, Broadway as a gatekeeper, acclaim as both invitation and trap. Waters compresses all of that into a single contrast. Ninety-seven miles becomes a class divide, a racial politics, a career gamble, and a myth of modernity you can almost hear humming behind the music.
Quote Details
| Topic | Travel |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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