Emma Harris
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Emma Richardovna Harris-Mizikina | |
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Born | Emma Elizabeth Matthews October 9, 1871 Augusta, Georgia, U.S. |
Died | December 31, 1940 Brooklyn, New York City | (aged 69)
Nationality | American, Russian |
Occupations |
|
Years active | 1901–1933 |
Spouses | Joseph B. Harris
(m. 1896–1907)Alexander Ivanovich Mizikin
(m. 1911–1926) |
Musical career | |
Genres | Lieder, popular music |
Instrument(s) | Vocals |
Emma Richardovna Harris-Mizikina (Russian: Эмма Ричардовна Харрис-Мизикина; October 9, 1871, in
Early life
Harris was born to a poor Negro family in the southern city of Augusta,[1] along Georgia's Savannah River, on October 7, 1871. At the end of the American Civil War in 1865, her parents, Sarah Green and Richard Matthews, left the Phinizy plantation to seek a better life and opportunities in the city. Green worked as a washerwoman, scrubbing clothes for the local white families, while Matthews labored daily in one of the city's numerous cotton processing mills. After Harris was born, two more children followed (Thomas, in 1873, and Josephine, in 1880).
By 1880, the family had settled in an old brick tenement on 319 Houston Street. Soon after, Harris began attending Edmund Asa Ware High School, the first public high school for African-Americans in Georgia. That summer, Harris was sent to Norfolk, Virginia, to live with her widowed Aunt Hattie Matthews to continue her studies and later attend the Negro Mission College, which opened in 1883. But a few years later, her aunt died, leaving the young Harris stranded in Virginia with no place to go. Instead of returning home, in 1892, Harris made her way to New York and found work as a chambermaid. On December 23, 1896, Harris met and married local janitor Joseph B. Harris.[1] The couple settled into a small apartment in Brooklyn, where they hoped to start a family. She also assisted in bringing several of her relatives up from the South. After the sudden death of their only child, Harris began focusing on her singing career. Due to her staunchly religious parents' disapproval of her career as an entertainer, Harris began singing in the Trinity Baptist Church Choir and working as a domestic close to five years.
Louisiana Amazon Guards (1901–1904)
Around April 3, 1901, while riding a trolley to work, Harris noticed that someone had left a copy of the
By April 21, the troupe had arrived in Leipzig, Germany. Throughout June and July, the troupe made a series of successful performances at Kaiserkrone and Carlsbad's Hotel Weber in Kiel. In late August, the women intrigued Hungarian audiences at the Os-Budavara fortress.[2] In September, the women fulfilled a month-long engagement at Vienna's Colosseum Theater. The following month was spent at Copenhagen's Cirkus Variete for the beginning of their brief Scandinavian tour.
In November, the troupe spent two successful weeks at
The new year of 1902, the group opened in Magdeburg for a two-week engagement before moving on to France, where the women intended to perform at Paris' famous Folie-Bergere cabaret. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if that ever came into fruition and the troupe returned to Germany to appear in Braunswich's Bruning Theater and Halle's Walhalla Theater. The month of March was spent in Breslau's Liebich Etablissement, followed by performances at Danzig's Wilhelm Theater and Poznan's Kaisergarten in April. In May, the group disappears briefly from the limelight as Fannie Wise and S.T. Jubrey suddenly quit the group and returned home to the United States. During this time their replacements, standby performers,
After twenty-one months of touring across Europe, during their Dresden engagement, the entire troupe walked out on their German impresario. Kohn-Wöllner was taken to court and accused of exploiting them financially. Lead performer Ollie Burgoyne was elected as their new manager and, now as the "Five Louisianas", the women left for Berlin, where they entertained at the Orpheum Theater and Harmonie Circus. After a brief engagement in Trier and Aachen, the group suddenly disappeared. In March 1903, Ollie Burgoyne and Florence Collins renewed their American passports and departed for London to join the cast of Hurtig & Seamon's In Dahomey, which opened on March 16 at the Shaftesbury Theatre.
The four remaining women continued performing around Germany for the next three months before departing for the
During the winter of 1903, the Louisiana Amazon Guard (Ebony Belles) finally dissolved. Alverta Burley married African-American entertainer, Oliver E. Brodie and the couple toured as "Brodie & Brodie". Harris convinced
The Black Nightingale (1905–1913)
Now as a solo artist, Harris returned to Helsinki in March 1905, performing for two weeks at the popular Princess Restaurant followed by two more weeks in the Finnish city of
Despite the
On September 2, the Russo-Japanese War ended, as the Russian Empire was forced to surrender to the Japanese. Scraping enough money by teaching English around Kazan, Harris boarded a train to Moscow, where she sought out Samuel Smith, who orchestrated her release from prison. The racist Smith was shocked to discover that he had aided a Negro woman from prison. Realizing she couldn't count on America for further help, Harris decided to scrap her plans to return the United States the following year and remain in Russia.[1]
Early in 1906, a Baltimore businessman, Harry Leans, visited Russia and offered to fund Harris's first solo tour across the Russian Empire. Harris decided to keep the African persona that Baranov had created for her, becoming "Galima Oriedo: The Black Nightingale". She performed songs in German, French, Polish, and Russian. Her specialty was Russian romance songs, which were extremely popular in all of the major cabarets and theaters across the empire. In between her songs, Harris demonstrated her ability to play the flute and ocarina, as well as her ability to imitate the sounds with her voice. She quickly became a popular operatic singer and classical dancer in Moscow and St. Petersburg. During the course of her tour, Harris learned that her husband had died back in Brooklyn.
Around 1907 to 1908, Harris returned and became a popular fixture in Moscow, performing with popular African-American entertainer Edgar H. Jones. He had been touring around Europe for 17 years, having arrived in 1891 with the "Afro-American Specialty Company". In 1904, as his European career began to falter, Edgar began frequently appearing across the Russian Empire, spending little time home in Berlin, where his wife Amelia Jones and four children lived at Kleine Hamburgerstrasse 2.
1908 was full of success for nearly every African-American expatriate across the Russian Empire. In St. Petersburg, the former leader of the old Louisiana Amazon Guards, Ollie Burgoyne, was a popular headliner, as mistress to a
During the summer of 1910, Harris appeared in the exotic city of
In January 1911, Harris returned from the
On January 6, 1912, billed as the famous Algerian Arab performer, Harris appeared in
In August, she was visited by her old acquaintance, 49-year old Negro comedian Edgar Jones, who was in the middle of one of his Ukrainian tours. After a brief visit, Edgar departed for the city of Lebedin (now Lebedyn) for a performance. On August 29, he died of heart paralysis and was buried in the Troitskaya Cemetery. Harris aided the governor of Kharkov and Odessa's American consulate in burying Jones and sending his possessions of clothing and musical instruments to his family in Germany. The following month, as anti-government protests raged across Russia, a double agent shot and killed Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin while he attended a performance at the Kiev Opera House; the Tsar heard the shots himself.
The Romanov Tercentenary began in 1913 and marked the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, beginning with a week of receptions at the Winter Palace in February before the Imperial family took a pilgrimage in May to Moscow and the numerous cities that once occupied the ancient territory of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. Harris spent the year touring across the various Ukrainian governorates. By May 1913, with the earnings from Harris's tours, Alexander purchased the popular Zerkalo Zhizni cinema from a man named G. Schmidt.
In July, she arrived in the governorate seat of Voronezh. Upon her arrival, Harris took the city by storm. She thrilled audiences for two days at the Fantasy Gardens and the Petrovsky Yacht Club. Newspapers printed positive reviews of the way she would open her act playing a flute and ocarina, before imitating those instruments with her ethereal voice. Then, after performing a series of Russian romances, she began dancing her exotic snake-like Algerian dances which sent audiences into a frenzy. In early October, Harris was in Odessa performing at the popular North Hotel, which had been renovated the previous year, adding a permanent music hall in the gardens behind the hotel.
During her engagement, Ophelia Gindra, daughter of an Austrian millionaire, fled to Odessa's North Hotel to elope with her boyfriend, who quickly abandoned her upon arrival. During this time, Gindra witnessed the Black Nightingale perform her exotic routine in the garden café-chantant. Harris took Gindra under her wing and helped her get employment as a singer at the hotel. However, the director fired Gindra after her first performance, and Harris frequently attempted to encourage Gindra to return home to Austria. On October 11, after Harris's engagement at the hotel ended, the women arrived at the train station to return to Kharkov. While waiting in the train station waiting lounge, Gindra committed suicide by consuming potassium cyanide, dying within seconds. Fearful, Harris immediately called the police before boarding her train home.
Back home in Kharkov, Harris was engaged at the Kommerchesky Garden Club on 21 Rymarskaya Street. The main hall was supplied with a stage and an orchestra pit, where the Black Nightingale performed her act. On October 17, the New Odessa and Morning of Kharkov newspapers announced that Harris's apartment had been raided, as it was suspected that she had stolen money and a feather ostrich boa from Gindra's personal belongings. After an ostrich boa was discovered, Harris claimed that she had purchased matching ones with Gindra. Harris was promptly arrested and sent back to Odessa to be questioned at the American consulate. She was soon cleared of all charges, released, and allowed to return home.
On November 14, Kharkov's Southern Edge (Yuzhny Kray) newspaper announced Harris's performance at the Zerkalo Zhizni Theater: "In the theater "The Mirror of Life" a performance will be held at the present time by the great artist Ms. Galima, the same mulatto who, in Odessa had to endure quite a few troubles. Ms. Galima has a beautiful voice and an extremely original repertoire."[citation needed]
Film career and the Russian Revolution (1914–1917)
On February 4, 1914, the electricity shut off at the Zerkalo Zhizni Cinema and chaos ensued. Outside an angry crowd gathered and Alexander calmed them, refunding their money and promising everyone one film free of charge the following day. Several months later, on May 9, Harris performed at her usual stomping grounds, the Kommerchesky Garden Club (May 9–15).
On June 28, 1914,
On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, and on August 3, France. As the Russian Empire prepared for mobilization, Johnson and his wife caught the next train to Paris. Harris herself promptly returned home to Kharkov and began liquidating her various properties.
On September 1, the Tsar declared that St. Petersburg would from then onwards be known as Petrograd. Russian high society began basking in what would be the Russian Empire's last year and Russian society's greatest season. There was a feverish desire to have a good time to combat the undercurrent of nervousness. It was a large distraction upon newspapers reporting on October 29 that the Ottoman Empire had attacked Russia. All of Petrograd indulged in wild partying, amusement and merrymaking before the Tsarist government initiated prohibition that November;
Two months after the start of the war, Turkish warships shelled cities on the southern coast of Russia, including Odessa. In response to this, the Mizinkin household relocated to Moscow, where Harris had purchased a comfortable apartment on 12 Bol'shoy Kozikhinskiy Pereulok, in the center of the city. Also living in the apartment building was the popular Russian actor from the Maly Theatre, Alexander Ostuzhev, who was appearing successfully in the production of V. Sardu's "Graf de Rizoor". Fyodor Tomas’ Aquarium Garden establishment was less than ten minutes away on the Bolshaya Sadovaya.
Lonely in the middle of Moscow without her husband and unable to tour due to the war, Harris decided to embark on a film career. After writing a scenario together with directors Sigmund Veselovsky and Parkomenko, Harris traveled to the G.I. Libkin Studios in Yaroslavl to star in her debut film Satan's Woman (Zhenshchina Satana). Released May 15 by the Alians Film Office, the 5-hour, 1350 meter film was an interesting attempt on Russian soil to create an intricate American adventure-drama.
In the film, "Famous circus actress Gaia Assi (Ge-de-Gayam), a charming and beautiful woman, enjoys great success with men. Not loving anyone except her devoted Arab Emerita (Harris, credited as Galima Oriedo), she pursues one goal – to fall in love. However, no one touches her suffering and the cold laughter of celebration meets hot recognition of its victims. On a ride she meets a banker who is fond of her, she also meets and soon conquers the heart of the engineer Lamanca, who saw her performance in a circus. Entertainer Yevgeniy Tolsky (Nikolai Saltykov), former lover of Miss Assi, was terribly jealous of her new banker lover. Gaia still possessed affection for Tolsky, much to the chagrin of Emerita who was deeply in love with him.[citation needed]
The banker walks in on Gaia kissing Tolsky, however, Gaia recovers her relationship with him by inviting everyone to a party at her home. She also asks that Tolsky bring along his brother Andrei (Lihomsky), a popular sculpture artist. At the party, guests demand that Gaia dance and she performs the dance of fire much to the delight of everyone. While Gaia spent much of the evening snuggling up with her banker, the sculptor Andrei realizes she is the woman of his dreams and wants to sculpt statues of her. Tolsky overhears his brother and an argument ensues. Eventually, the banker gets in involved and Tolsky challenges him to a duel. Tolsky injures the banker and returns to the party to search for Gaia, only to find her embracing Andrei. Rushing out from her bedroom, Emerita attempts to comfort Tolsky. Unfortunately, he pushes her away, locks himself in the next room to commit suicide. Hearing Emerita's cries, Gaia and Andrei discover the horrible tragedy that has occurred. Emerita embraces the cold body of her dead love interest, blaming his death on Gaia and Andrei.[citation needed]
Disgusted, Andrei loses interest in the beautiful dancer and immediately decides to seek revenge on his brother. Conspiring with a friend, Andrei kidnaps Gaia in an automobile to an abandoned cellar. They're unaware that Emerita had followed behind them in a taxi and finds a way to rescue her starving friend from the cellar. As the women escape, they're followed by the men until the pursuers get caught in a car accident. Later on, while Gaia is home entertaining a new potential lover, Andrei sneaks into her home and poisons the coffee right before she begins serving refreshments. Gaia, in agony from the effects of the poisoning, is approached by Andrei who declared that he was once in love with her but now was lost to him. During his speech, Gaia used the last of her energy to grab a dagger and murder Andrei before she also succumbed to death."[citation needed]
Harris became an overnight sensation due to the success of the film.[according to whom?]
That summer at Moscow's Aquarium Garden, Fyodor Tomas sold tobacco, then sent the proceeds to the troops in the war. Elsewhere, bazaars were organized to sell items to raise money for the troops. On June 12, for the first time in five years, Harris renewed her American passport, although there were discrepancies, as she claimed to have been born in Washington, D.C., in 1886.
Before the year was over, the Kinolent Film Office released the comedy film, Feet Up! (Nogi Vverkh), in which Harris starred alongside actor Tikhomirov. It was directed by Boris Kramskoy, who also held the main role within the film.
In 1916, to supplement an income, the Mizikin home doubled as a high-class brothel that serviced soldiers and aristocratic clientele.
By the beginning of 1917, Harris decided to follow in the footsteps of her husband and attended
After the
Throughout the course of the October Revolution, Harris and her fellow brothel girls banded together and tended to the wounded Bolsheviks that they dragged inside from the daily street skirmishes. By the end of the week, dozens of buildings in the center of Moscow were damaged by shots from rifles, machine guns and artillery fire, including the most revered cathedrals in the Kremlin itself. On November 20, the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee proclaimed its victory, declaring that the Cadets and its other opponents had surrendered or been killed. On November 29, Harris used her connections to gather the ingredients to produce a large Thanksgiving feast for American Consul Maddin Summers and the remnants of Moscow's dwindling American Consulate staff.
Harris was running out of time to leave. The Bolsheviks did not want people to slip out from under their power, and everyone who wanted to leave Moscow had to get a special permit. Train traffic throughout the country had deteriorated greatly: the schedule became irregular, tickets were in short supply, rolling stock was deteriorated, and delays became frequent due to engine failure. In addition, getting on a train in Moscow did not guarantee the achievement of the destination. At each station, many people tried to get on the train that the passengers had to fight for their seats. Harris enlisted with the
Russian Civil War (1918–1925)
As soon as Harris returned home to Moscow, on March 3, 1918, the newly formed Soviet Union backed out of the war after signing the
Around this time, Harris had purchased a 15-room house located at 4 Kalanchevskaya in eastern Moscow's working class Krasnaya Vorota neighborhood. The five-story Art Nouveau style house, designed by the architect Alexander Nikiforov and built between 1875 and 1880, was located in the railroad-infested Krasnoselsky district. As usual, the sumptuously decorated house was kept in order by a team of servants and also doubled as a brothel.
Due to the deteriorating health conditions in Moscow,
That summer, Harris found herself unemployed. No longer the wealthy aristocrat she once was, she now listed in the category of the declasse bourgeoisie. The Soviet government began liquidizing and nationalizing all of its theaters, cabarets and music halls. Even the once popular Aquarium establishment was being occupied by a local military garrison. Besides earning enough income from her successful brothel, she soon found employment with the
Much of 1919, Harris was sent east to
Anti-revolutionary in sympathy, during her sojourn in the city, Harris became involved with various
On February 11, 1921, the People's Commissariat of Education was dissolved. Shutting down her successful brothel, Harris converted her mansion into a comfortable American pension, where she housed Red Cross officials, journalists and other Westerners. Being located between three major railway stations, she soon managed to arrange for all the railway information bureaus to immediately direct all visiting Americans to her establishment.
That summer, after the Civil War finally drew to a close, a Famine raged across the Volga region known as Russia's breadbasket. In September, when the American Relief Association,
In late 1922, Ukrainian-born American journalist of the
Soviet worker (1926–1933)
1926 marked the end of Harris's career as a successful actress as she sought employment as a textile worker at the Proletarsky Trud Silk Mill.[1] This new shift in her life also marked the end of her fifteen-year marriage with Alexander Mizinkin, who moved out some time later. In the meantime, the Soviets finally seized control over her magnificent mansion, gave Harris two rooms on the first floor, and converted the remaining rooms into apartments, which ten Russian families soon inhabited. With all six of her servants dismissed, Harris was frequently accompanied by a Lithuanian servant, one of her former prostitutes, who provided assistance when Harris built an improvised kitchen in the common corridor of the building, where she spent hours busy with pots and pans cooking hash, pork and beans, beef stew, cabbage and ham hocks, fried chicken and cornbread. Although her American boarding house was gone, Harris continued providing southern hospitality to every visiting American that she came across. "Just supply me the rubles, I’ll find the stuff",[citation needed] she would say to any American that wanted a home-cooked meal.[3] The early groups of African-Americans, such as Harry Haywood, who arrived in April 1926, quickly grew fearful spending time around Harris. Now classified by the Soviets as a declassé bourgeoisie, she was extremely bitter about her present situation and frequently criticized the Soviet regime, meanwhile praising the old Tsarist system. She was often recalled saying, "I'm like a cat with nine lives, honey. I always landed on my feet...been doing it all my life wherever I been. These Bolsheviks ain't gonna kill me."[citation needed]
In late 1928, an American communist from Idaho, James Pierce, arrived at the Soviet Union for a five-year stay in Leningrad and Moscow. By September, he secured a room at Kalanchevskaya 4, eventually becoming very close with Harris. Her apartment had become a regular Saturday evening meeting place of American expats. In between serving home-cooked meals, Harris pounding out jazz numbers on her piano, coupled with her melodious singing, added a dash of color to the drab grey Russian winter.
During the 1930s, Harris became one of the lead speakers for the International Red Aid (MOPR), travelling Russia and giving fiery speeches protesting against racism, singing spirituals and writing poems for Soviet newspapers.
On June 26, 1932, Harris, Coretti Arle-Titz, Robert "Bob" Ross and Robert Robinson gathered at Nikolayevsky Station to welcome twenty-two Afro-American artists that were invited to the Soviet Union to produce a film depicting Negro laborers in their difficult working conditions in the American South. The film was based on
During the first week of July, an Anti-Scottsboro rally, organized by the International Red Aid, was held at the Park of Rest & Culture, where Harris, her face illuminated by the blazing floodlights and voice magnified by loudspeakers, performed a number of spirituals and delivered a fiery speech in fluent Russian before the masses. Not long after the disappointing reality that Black and White wasn't to be, Harris found herself employed as a saleswoman for one of Moscow's Torgsin shops,[3] where she was frequently seen leaving with a bulging bag filled with cooking ingredients and vodka, which she called "Russian corn whiskey".
In early 1933, while employed as the chief correspondent for the Stankoimport State Trust,[1] the long years of Russian exposure failed to remove much of Harris's deeply-ingrained American values, which frequently caused her to become overcome with nostalgia. As she grew older, her desire to see America grew stronger, and when the United States finally recognized the Soviet Union during the summer, the American consulate helped to arrange for her return to New York. That August, after an interview mentioning a wish to visit the US, Harris was granted permission to travel to Latvia to receive an American passport before boarding the S.S Milwaukee from Hamburg, back to New York after 32 years.
Later life (1934–1940)
Harris was invited to several functions across New York City speaking of her success and experiences in Russia, up until February 1934, when she was suddenly hospitalized and placed in a nursing home due to her failing health. In December 1937, during an interview with journalist Theodore Poston, she mentioned that she was no longer interested in remaining in the United States, slowly saving funds to return home to the Soviet Union.[citation needed] Unfortunately, she was unable to return and, by 1940, she had moved to Brooklyn, living with her nephew, Richard Matthews, and his family, where she remained, hoping to return to Russia after the war, until her death.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g Opportunity. National Urban League. 1932.
- ^ a b "Simon Géza Gábor. The Pre-History of Jazz in Hungary". Archived from the original on January 8, 2016. Retrieved November 23, 2017.
- ^ a b c d "Harris, Emma E. "The Mammy of Moscow" · Notable Kentucky African Americans Database". nkaa.uky.edu. Retrieved January 11, 2020.