Evelyn Preer

Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, pioneering black actress Evelyn Preer was educated in Chicago, where she and her mother moved after the death of her father. She entered show business vis vaudeville and the "chitlin' circuit" of minstrel shows that served the country's strictly segregated black communities at the turn of the century. She also appeared on Broadway, and in 1919 made her film debut in The Homesteader (1919), which was also the first film for pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. She made nine more films with Micheaux, and in 1920 she joined another pioneering black actress, Anita Bush, in Bush's Lafayette Players theatrical troupe. One of the actors in the troupe was Edward Thompson, and he and Preer married four years later. In addition to the Lafayette Players, Preer played the lead in a Broadway production of "Salome" and starred in productions by famed Broadway impresario David Belasco, among others. She was an accomplished singer and made records on which she was backed by such musical icons as Duke Ellington. She appeared in a few comedy shorts for producer Al Christie and made her feature sound debut in a low-budget independent musical, Georgia Rose (1930). Her career was tragically cut short in 1932 when she died of double pneumonia due to post-partum complications after the birth of her daughter, Edeve.