 Sophie Tucker, one of the most famous vaudeville performers in the country, was in the middle of a card game in 1910 when the biggest break of her career marched into the room. Sophie Tucker's longtime friend and assistant, a black woman named Molly Elkins, dragged Shelton Brooks, a young black songwriter, into the room. And as he sang the song that he wrote, Tucker, the white vaudeville superstar, was left speechless by the power of the song. She wrote about it later in her autobiography.