children. She lived off her holdings for a number of years, but was eventually forced to sell most of her property to survive, including most of her medals and jewels and three of her four houses. In her final years, the president of the local NAACP chapter helped pay her taxes and water bill, and provided her family with coal and wood. She died in poverty on June 24, 1933, from cancer at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. She did not have the money to pay for a gravestone upon her death, and is buried in her hometown at Grace Church Cemetery. In 2018, money was raised to finally place a headstone on her grave; the headstone was erected in June of that year. See also African-American musical theater Black Patti Records References Further reading Wright, Josephine, and Eileen Southern. Sissieretta Jones (1868-1933).'' Black perspective in music 4.2 (1976): 191–201. Web. External links History's Unsung Opera Star, National Public Radio, June 11, 2007 Sissieretta Jones was a Trailblazing Black Opera Singer, PBS American Masters, 2020 19th-century African-American women singers 19th-century American women opera singers African-American women opera singers American operatic sopranos 1860s births 1933 deaths American stage actresses Vaudeville performers Musicians from Rhode Island Musicians from Portsmouth, Virginia Singers from Virginia 19th-century American actresses 20th-century American actresses 20th-century African-American women singers 20th-century American women opera singers Burials in Rhode Island Classical musicians from Virginia