Mary-Beth Clementine

Mary-Beth Clementine was a singer most popular in the years between 1942 and 1959. She traveled around the country, performing at churches. Her repertoire was a mix of religious and popular songs, and although she recorded a few records, they seem lost to time. The only one you find mentioned was a cover of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," released under the label "New-Edison." One thing Mary-Beth was known for was her adoptions. She's listed on many sites that mention adoption and the history of adoption. She adopted two children in the late 1940s, Stuart and Mark. She also spoke as an advocate for the benefits of adoption in front of the United States Congress in 1949, who were convening to debate and discuss the (then recent) first adoption of an African American child to a white family in the United States. She was specifically there to detail her experience going through the system to adopt Stuart. Her other son was adopted later and according to a single line on one adoption site, under "unusual circumstances." In 1959 it surfaced that Mary-Beth had been twice divorced, both times to her manager Sterling. This ended her career with the religious audience she had been catering to, and while she performed occasionally since then, she mostly faded into obscurity. Mary-Beth passed away in 1994 at the age of 76, of a stroke.