Evelyn Preer

Evelyn Preer
Publicity photo of Preer (1923)
Born	Evelyn Jarvis (1896-07-16)July 16, 1896 Vicksburg, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	November 27, 1932(1932-11-27) (aged 36) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1919–1932
Spouse(s)	Edward Thompson (1924–1932; her death)
Children	1

Evelyn Preer, born Evelyn Jarvis (July 16, 1896 – November 27, 1932), was a pioneering African-American stage and screen actress and blues singer of the 1910s through the early 1930s. Evelyn was known within the black community as "The First Lady of the Screen."

She was the first black actress to earn celebrity and popularity. She appeared in ground-breaking films and stage productions, such as the first play by a black playwright to be produced on Broadway, and 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.

Born Evelyn Jarvis in Vicksburg, Mississippi, she migrated with her mother to Chicago after her father died prematurely. She completed grammar and high school in the city.

Jarvis began her performance career in early vaudeville and minstrel shows. She changed her surname to Preer.

Her first film role was in Oscar Micheaux's 1919 debut film The Homesteader, when she was 23. Micheaux promoted Preer as his leading actress with a steady tour of personal appearances and a publicity campaign. Her most well-known film role is in his Within Our Gates, (1920). It is the only known surviving Micheaux film to feature her, although she appeared in more of his works.

Micheaux was such an influential film director that he has been dubbed the "Father of Afro-American Cinema". Micheaux developed many of his subsequent films to showcase Preer's extraordinary versatility. These included The Brute (1920), The Gunsaulus Mystery (1921), Deceit (1923), Birthright (1924), The Devil’s Disciple (1925), The Conjure Woman (1926) and The Spider’s Web (1926). These Micheaux titles are presumed lost. Preer was lauded by both the black and white press for her ability to continually succeed in ever more challenging roles. She was known for refusing to play roles that she believed demeaned African Americans.

In 1920, Evelyn Preer joined The Lafayette Players in Chicago. The theatrical stock company was founded in 1915 by Anita Bush, a pioneering stage and film actress known as “The Little Mother of Black Drama.” Bush and her acting troupe toured the US to bring legitimate theatre to black audiences, at a time when theatres were racially segregated by law in the South, and often by custom in the North.