Evelyn Preer Was “The First Lady of Screen”
Evelyn Preer Was “The First Lady of Screen”
Evelyn Preer paved the way for Black people in cinema
This is History Books Omitted, a bi-weekly newsletter written by Nadirah Simmons that looks at lesser known/talked about moments in Black history, music and pop culture. If you like, subscribe here.
I’ve been spending a lot of my time inside watching movies, scrolling through YouTube, exhausting every single streaming account I have and browsing Tumblr-YES, I still use Tumblr.
This week I came across a post on the app that featured photos of actresses from Tribeca’s “Black Actress Canon,” including some of my favorite women like Angela Bassett, Ruby Dee, Whoopi Goldberg and Pam Grier. There was one name I did not recognize, though, and it was that of Evelyn Preer. Tribeca’s site describes Preer as an actress who “possessed a talent that stripped down the art of screen acting to its most visceral basics. [In the film Within Our Gates], her work becomes a proud rebuke of racism both on camera and off.”
Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1896 and then relocating to Chicago at the age of two with her mother and siblings after the death of her father, Preer’s early hobbies put her on a path to stardom. She started acting in high school, and her participation in a Vaudeville troop and as a “street preacher” helped ignite her career. In 1919, she lander her first film role in Oscar Micheaux’s debut The Homesteader. In this role came a newfound stardom for Preer, not just as the film’s character Orlean, but also as Micheaux’s leading lady.
Preer would be casted in more Micheaux films-all silent, including the previously mentioned Within Our Gates, The Brute, The Gunsaulus Mystery, Deceit, Birthright, The Devil’s Disciple, The Conjure Woman and The Spider’s Web. As you can see, her list of movie roles was long. And Preer wasn’t just a star onscreen, but offscreen as well, with personal appearance tours and star-making publicity cementing her celebrity status and earning her the affectionate nickname as “The First Lady of Screen” from Black people. Her first appearance in a film with sound, also known as “talkies,” would come in the 1930 musical Georgia Rose. Two years later she would appear in her last film.
Preer’s talent wasn't just confined to film, however. In 1920, she joined The Lafayette Players, a theatrical stock company founded by pioneering stage and film actress Anita Bush, often referred to as “The Little Mother of Black Drama.” As a theatre actress Preer appeared in the first play by a Black playwright to be produced on Broadway, as well as the first New York-style production with a Black cast in California in 1928, in a revival of a play adapted from Somerset Maugham's Rain. She sang as well, recording backup vocals with Duke Ellington and Red Nichols. You can listen to her recordings here.
In April of 1932, Preer and her husband, fellow Lafayette Player Edward Thompson, welcomed their daughter Edeve Thompson. In November of that same year Preer passed away from double pneumonia, a complication of her childbirth.
Much can be said about “The First Lady of Screen.” I think about the violent racism she undoubtedly faced as a Black person in film, the advantages her lighter skin tone gave her within the industry and the conversations around colorism that we continue to have, her death as a result of childbirth and the racial disparities in maternal morbidity that exist today and so much more. You don’t have to dig deep at all to find that history doesn’t just repeat itself, but it also remains unchanged in so many ways.
I’ll be spending my night watching Within Our Gates, which you can watch for free here. It’s Preer’s only surviving Micheaux film, with the others all being considered lost. Let me know if you watch it too, then I’ll create a discussion room on here for us to chat about it! See you next newsletter!
References: Joseph Worrell for Silent Era. African American Registry. Evelyn Preer: In a Hollywood Separate But Unequal by Tamara Shiloh. Discography of American Historical Recordings.
Because you knowwww we cite our sources around here!