How I got over

by Willa Ward-Royster

In 1931 Gertrude Murphy Ward was pressing clothes in a Philadelphia dry cleaning establishment when a voice said to her, "Go sing my Gospel and help save dying and lost men and women." With her two daughters, Clara and Willa, she went on to found the group that became the world-famous Ward Singers. By 1970, it took fifty police officers to control the crowds that greeted the Ward Singers at one of their concerts. Lavishly illustrated with sixty-one photographs from the author's collection, How I Got Over chronicles the Wards' story from rural Anderson, South Carolina, to the streets of North Philadelphia and beyond. Told by Gertrude's oldest daughter, Willa, with the assistance of musician and writer Toni Rose, the Wards' story ranges over the joys and frustrations, triumphs and agonies of what it means to be simultaneously a family, an entertainment business, and a group with a mission to spread God's word.