Evelyn Preer

Evelyn Preer (née Jarvis; July 26, 1896 – November 17, 1932), was an African American pioneering screen and stage actress, and jazz and blues singer in Hollywood during the late-1910s through the early 1930s.

Preer was promoted by Micheaux as his leading actress with a steady tour of personal appearances and a publicity campaign, she was one of the first African American women to become a star to the black community.

[5] She also acted in Micheaux's Within Our Gates (1920), in which she plays Sylvia Landry, a teacher who needs to raise money to save her school.

These included The Brute (1920), The Gunsaulus Mystery (1921), Deceit (1923),[6] Birthright (1924), The Devil’s Disciple (1926), The Conjure Woman (1926) and The Spider's Web (1926).

In 1920, Preer joined The Lafayette Players a theatrical stock company in Chicago that was founded in 1915 by Anita Bush, a pioneering stage and film actress known as “The Little Mother of Black Drama".

Preer supported and understudied Lenore Ulric in the leading role of Edward Sheldon's drama of a Harlem prostitute.

Under the leadership of Robert Levy, Preer and her colleagues performed in the first New York–style play featuring black players to be produced in California.

[9] Preer also sang in cabaret and musical theater where she was occasionally backed by such diverse musicians as Duke Ellington and Red Nichols early in their careers.

Still from the 1919 Oscar Micheaux film Within Our Gates