August 21, 2026 • 37 mins
Yves shines a light on pioneering performers Anna and Emma Hyers.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
I Never told you production by I hurried you. And
today it is time for another edition of Female First,
which means we are once again thrilled to be joined
by the Adventuress, the amazing Eves.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome, Ears, Hello, and thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Oh yes, we always love having you. We love catching
up with you and hearing about your adventures once a month.
So how have you been, Eves.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I've been good. I have been chilling.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I've been going to a lot of arts events, which
is super nice. You know, it's such an interesting place
to be in when you're like trying to integrate into
a new space. But the thing that's interesting about being
arts and cultural spaces is that they're always small kind
of no matter where you go. So even though I'm
(01:02):
so new to this place, I'll be like, oh, I've
seen you before. Oh I've seen you before. And then
I start to realize, like, man, maybe I am such
a like I'm such an archetype, Like I'm such a stereotype.
Like the kind of person I am is the kind
of person you would expect me to be. It's like, Okay,
I have my niches, I guess I guess it is
what it is. But yeah, it's been nice.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It's a small world for sure, the art world. You
can really run into people.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It is small.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
It is small, and I'm just trying to navigate how
much I like that like, how much of it do
I like?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And how much of it do I not like?
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Because you know, there's this ideal around leaving and going
somewhere else and implanting your plate yourself in a new
place where.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
It's like you get to totally reinvent yourself.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
And you know, you realize because you are still who
you are, that you know that reinvention might not be
as much of a one eighty as you know you
think it could be.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
So it's it's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, that's true, just to see what sticks when you're
when you're in a new place. M hm, you're like, well,
I guess this is who I am. Yeah, you know
what I think about a lot. And I know it's
cold where you are, so you probably don't have an answer.
I've always wanted to check back in with you about
(02:26):
your surfing.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
That was actually just on my mind.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Okay, So I don't know if I mentioned it on
the show before or if I talked to y'all outside
of it about it. But I got some piercings and
that's why I put a pause on the surfing because
they are you're not supposed to submerge them. I baby,
my piercing is like, I cannot because my skin gets
so sensitive.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
So I was so.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Sad that I had to put my surfing lessons on pause.
But I was literally, it's so funny you asked because
I was dating about it today.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I was like, Oh, I'm so ready to get back
to surfing.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And I was actually just messaging my piercer like earlier
this week about like some issues I was having with.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Healing, and I'm like, you know what, He's like, this
is fine, this is fine.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
I'm like, he gave me two and a half months,
so it's been longer than that for me. So I
feel like I'm ready to get back out there. I
have some other things going on that I have to, Like,
it'll be it'll still probably be another month before I
get back into it, but I think I think it's September.
I'm gonna I'm gonna start back up. The weather's still
good regardless, people are still out surfing. I've been to
(03:27):
the surfer's corner here there's everybody still out on their boards.
So I think September, October, November. I'm not gonna put
a hard date on it yet because I have some
travel coming up, but yeah, it's gonna you'll get an
update about it soon.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Let's let's just say that I'm very excited. I think
about this all the time. I'm like, wonder if Eve's
just been able to surf again?
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Can I tell you when?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
This is gonna sound so superficial, But one thing I've
been thinking about with surfing is those like I'm so
ready to put on the wet suit again because they're
so cute. I'm like, I really want a yellow wetsuit.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I need a yellow wetsuit.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
This is this is how I do when I get
into a new thing. I get all the gear and
accoutremont and sometimes I don't finish doing the thing, and
so I'm like, I gotta I gotta go get a
yellow wetsuit I got. I don't want to rent a
wet suit again. Next time, I gotta get my own.
I want it to be yellow. Why are they all
so boring? I don't know if there's a reason for that.
But that's the one thing I'm thinking about.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
You know what, though, when you actually like excited about something,
when you get all this stuff and I calculate this,
it's like, if I do this this many times, it's
paid for itself. Like that's how I work through most
of my hobbies.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Yes, but then you end up needing a whole other
room for all the things you've now accumulated that you
may not use super frequently but maybe from time to time.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Right, but it will remind you like you were doing it,
You did this, you did it.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yes, Yeah, I think it can be motivational too.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
If it's something that excites you that I get to
fit on this yellow whatsuit, that you're even more excited
to keep doing the thing, that's true. Yeah, yeah, I
kind of know the answer to this. But what are
y'all's experiences with dancing?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Okay, I was waiting on Samantha.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I will say, let's see my experiences with dancing. I
love dancing just as a form of expression, as a
way of like moving through emotion, as a way of
expressing joy. I just I love dancing in a recreational
(05:45):
and just.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
It's an activity that.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
I love to do with myself that cheers me up
and that I know I can take with me anywhere,
And so I really loved dancing in that way. I
was taking dancing lessons for a little bit here, but
I had to put that to the side to make
room for other things. But I grew up making up
little dances with like family members and friends and performing
them for other family members.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Hopefully those family members we.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Performed for don't remember them, but I'm sure some of
them live in the bags of their minds somewhere. Thank God,
I'm pretty sure none of it's captured on video. So
I've been so dance is a big part of my life,
and I used to watch the dance shows. I used
to watch America's Dance Crew, like, oh yeah, I had
(06:31):
a Jabbawaki shirt. Yeah, yeah, I was that kid, And yeah,
I think dancing's super cool. Love I love it as
an art form. I love all different kinds of dances.
I watch dance troops at theaters and other live performances,
and yeah, it's cool, love it.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
I think the listeners because I've talked about it plenty
of times. Though I love dance, dance is one of
my favorite things in which I suddenly got into zoomba
slash hip hop, which sounds we were saying it out
like out of my mouth. And so I really got
into teaching because of that, and because I like to
make my own routines and now I can make other
(07:13):
people do them too, and I feel cool because I'm like, a,
look at this, that's what I made up. They're not
really hard, they're not that difficult, but they're really fun.
And when I do connect with the students, they seem
to really like.
Speaker 6 (07:25):
It and love it.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
And so this makes me feel like a whole new level.
And that's kind of what I did as a kid too,
is like I never I took this.
Speaker 6 (07:30):
This is for like a week.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
It's expensive, like hobbies like that are ridiculously expensive. And
my low self esteem was like if I don't know
it immediately, which is impossible.
Speaker 6 (07:42):
You can't know a routine.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Within thirty seconds but yet or the first two times.
But some people are actually ridiculously talented and able to
pick up choreo like that. So I was not like
that as a kid, so I immediately quit because also
performing in front of people was not my thing, which
is odd now that I'm teaching, but it feels different
that way.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
So but I love it. It feels like it is.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
My life, part of my life, and if I didn't
have it, I get really sad, Like that's that's for me,
my social stuff that I don't have to talk to
people for long periods of time, but for an hour
we are all doing something in common together to the
same music and having a good time, not thinking about
anything else.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
So I absolutely love it.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
It is a huge part and so obviously very active
dance also hopefully it's keeping my mind together because you know,
sometimes I forget things.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
It's beautiful. Sounds like you have a relationship with dance.
Speaker 6 (08:37):
Yes, I think I do.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
I think I do.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
We'll see, Yeah, I think so. I think so, Samantha,
I also love dance. I grew up taking ballet. The
thing about the wetsuit, it reminded me like one of
my favorite parts was the day you got your costume.
That was like the tling. Unless it was a bad
costume in this it was not a good day, but
(09:01):
usually it was fun, it was really exciting. I think
that was my favorite part was the costume. Yeah, okay,
what about the movement? Though you can't I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I actually remember.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I think I was in fifth grade and we did
Swan Lake, like a fifth grade version of Swan Lake,
and I remember the moves like I still remember, like
how we had to because it had like an intersecting
part where everybody had to kind of move between each other.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I thought it was really cool. I liked I liked
doing it.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I just remember the costume was like that was the
most exciting part to me. And then I was in
I've done a couple of dancing classes over the years,
and then in college, I was in an organization that
had a lot of dancing involved with it, and that
was fun, but those were mostly goofy dances. And I
did want to bring up two NERD related things. I
(09:57):
loved DDR growing up.
Speaker 7 (10:00):
Every day, every single we would mess up, like you
would have those pads at home, and we would play
it so much that we had to like surgically operate
on the pad to move the censor back to where
it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And there are certain songs I can't hear without like
never Ending Story that's a DDR song. I can't hear
without remembering the move, like the sound of the footstops.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
So I like, I like dancing video games.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I know that does not at all translate to skill
in the dance world.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I think in video dance video game dance world.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
And also I'm glad you brought up Eve's like media
around dancing because there are a lot of good horror
movies with dance.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Hold on, wait which one that jump?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
There's a bunch of like Suspiria, uh, Black Small.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
I wanted it to have to do with it like
ballet feels like or interpretive dance.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Well, yeah, there's a all genre out there, creepy dances.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (11:11):
Oh yeah, Megan, But yes.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
That is true.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
I've never seen it. That's the only part I know
of it, to be honest, I'm.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Just saying there there's there's also reality TV shows, but
there are horror movies as well. And you know, Samith,
aren't we doing for our next feminist movie Friday?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Isn't it a dance?
Speaker 6 (11:36):
It's not a horror movie.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
However, it's not a horror movie.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
There's a whole genre of non horror dance movies as well.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
Oh yeah, Like eventually we might have to go into
like step up and like you guys served and all
of that stuff.
Speaker 6 (11:49):
Stop the Yard, which still is one of my favorite.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
But yes, we are going to do center Stage because
I was like, oh, I've talked about it so often,
but I'm like, this is one of those Holt classics.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
That we need to talk about.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Also, it was it was Zoe Saldana's first movie, and
I feel like that needs to be recognized as well,
because you know.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I haven't seen it, so I'm excited. That's that's kind
of fun.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
I forgot to mention a critical I think point when
you ask me the question about my relationship to dance,
and that's that I actually wanted to be a backup
hip hop dancer for a while. Like that is another
path that my life could have taken. I won, like
a free hip hop dance when I went to some
I was at some conference and I won a free
(12:38):
lesson once and I.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Never did it, and I regretted that, Yeah, but I could,
I would have. I did dream of it. I actually
that was another path my life could have taken.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
But that those they're infinite paths for me because I've
been to so many things.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I just got to pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And one life you're professional surfer, you know, Yeah, all
these paths that.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Eves is so much cooler than this, Eves.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this
is a first for female first where we're talking about sisters.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah, I think it is a first.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, well, here.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
We go, and that makes me want to jump into
another musical or they dance that song sisters.
Speaker 8 (13:24):
Anyway, moving back, I'm very.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Excited to talk about these sisters. So who are we
discussing today, Eves? We're talking about the Higher Sisters. And
I didn't even think about it being a first because
they've been in my list for so long to talk about.
We've talked about other people in theater like the Higher
Sisters are.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
And in music and in performance. But the Higher are
really special, so I'm glad we get to talk about
them today. They starred in the first known black American
play that was set in Africa, and the filmmaker Sushiel Bibbs,
who has made films about them and researched their history,
(14:18):
says that they also created the first American musicals. But
what it comes down to is that the Higher Sisters
were pioneering in the field of theater in musical theater
and concert in performance in America, and their history is
super cool, so I am excited to talk about them today.
(14:42):
Anna Meda Hires and Emma Louise Hires. Yes, they've got
a really fascinating story. So shall we get into it?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
So, Anna Meda Hires was born in eighteen fifty five
and Emma Louise Hires was born in eighteen fifty seven,
and there was some sort of migration from New York
to California that might have been sometime around eighteen fifty six,
not so sure about the exact year, but basically after
the Goal Rush, and they grew up in Sacramento.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
The parents were named Samuel B. Hires and Annie E.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Hires, and Samuel owned a barber shop in Sacramento, though
he later left that behind to work more on managing
his daughter's careers.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And Annie was a crafts person.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
She apparently offered classes to women in things like embroidery
and leather work. And both of them had some musical skills,
seemed to be amateur opera singers, and they were able
to teach some of their daughters some of those skills
around performance and music as it so often goes, there
were quite a few discrepancies in the sources about where
(15:54):
they were born, when they were born, and how old
they were at a given time, but they guarded in performance.
They started in performance pretty early on. Samuel and Annie
set their daughters up with piano and vocal lessons, and
they learned from a German teacher named Hugo Sank and
an opera singer named Josephine Dormy. And apparently Samuel told
(16:19):
his daughters that he would take them to Europe for
more training, although that never happened. But they, as you'll
find out here, soon went on to have an illustrious
career regardless.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
The sisters started.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Singing at parties to gain experience performing, and in eighteen
sixty seven they had their professional stage debut at the
Metropolitan Theater in Sacramento. Now remember that I said they
were born in eighteen fifty five. In eighteen fifty seven,
and this is a mere ten years after the younger sister,
(16:52):
Emma Luis, was born, so very young when they had
their debut, Anna made a Hires was a soprano, and
Emma had a contralto voice, and they would perform male
and female roles in duets together, and they were giving
recitals around San Francisco and Oakland, and so in eighteen
(17:15):
seventy one they went on their first tour across the
US under their father's management. They performed in places like Utah, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio,
New York, and other places on the East coast, and
in Salt Lake City, for instance, they performed John Barnett's
opera The Mountain Self in that Anna plays a fairy
(17:38):
who falls in love with a young man and that
man is played by Emma. So their shows would include
a bunch of different kinds of pieces and music. They
would have operatic pieces, classical ballads, spirituals, and at the
time that was pretty expansive because there weren't a ton
of Black Americans who were performing certain music at the time.
(18:02):
In eighteen seventy two, they even headlined a festival called P. S.
Gilmore's A Great Piece Jubilee. And in eighteen seventy six
they performed a musical drama in Massachusetts and that was
commissioned for them by their management company, Redpath Lyceum Bureau.
This musical drama was written by a white playwright and
(18:22):
a former Union soldier Joseph Bradford, and it was called
Out of the Wilderness. The Higher Sisters and others who
were previously in the Georgia Minstrels joined the troops. So
we've talked about minstreul ce before in previous episodes of
Female First, but minstrel c was big at this time
in the mid eighteen hundreds to late eighteen hundreds, and
(18:43):
that was the context of blackface minstrel sy and like,
you know, this white playwright Joseph Bradford who had created.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Out of the Wilderness.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
You know, it was a lot of white people who
began these minstrel troops and put together these shows. So
that was it's still even though the Higher Sisters are pioneering,
they're still working with familiar frameworks and then so people
are going to be familiar with coming to shows like this,
(19:15):
but they are used to white people performing in blackface,
black people performing in blackface, and they're performing minstrel shows
where there are a lot of stereotypes of how black
people are viewed at the time that they're seeing on stage.
So they toured this show throughout New England and later
(19:36):
in the year they changed the show titled to out
of bondage. So the show is about an enslaved family
and friends who are living in the South pre Civil war,
and war ensues, the Union troops come and some of
the enslaved people that are in that are featured in
the show, they go north, and years later they all
(19:57):
meet up and the people who have went north become
professional vocalists, and of course that becomes this medium for
them to be able to sing this concert in the
last act of the show, and apparently there was a
quote from Mark Twain and the marketing material from Redpath,
and the quote was this, I went a mile and
a half in the most furious tempest of wind and
(20:18):
snow that I have seen for five years to see
the plantation sketches of the Higher's troop and hear the
exquisite music. And I would go three miles through just
such a tempest to have that pleasant and satisfactory experience again,
your friend Samuel L.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Clemens.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
So of course the marketing material is going to do
what it does. They're going to uplift the Higher Sister's performance.
It's going to be laudatory. But as they do more performances,
they are getting positive critical reception.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
In newspapers.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
It's not always good reception because of the context of
what the show is about.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
But a lot of the.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Time people are praising their singing abilities, and their comedic abilities,
and their performance abilities in general. So sometimes it's more
of a technical laudatory like feedback that they're getting, but
it is still generally positive. They performed this play out
(21:19):
of bondage until at least eighteen ninety one, so for
many years this was part of their repertoire. In eighteen
seventy nine, they performed in a play written by Es
Getchel called Erlena the African Princess. They performed it in
Indianapolis and other venues in Illinois and Iowa, and when
they got back to San Francisco they performed it there too.
(21:41):
They later performed it in Oregon, so in many places
they were showing this. In the story, a king vanishes
Princess Erlina, who is the rightful heir to the throne.
What ends up happening is that the king's son falls
for Princess Arlena. So you've created this external conflict, like
how could the sun go against his father? He and
(22:01):
a group of his allies try to rescue the princess
and they get caught up in the process, but the
son escapes and eventually he overthrows the king. In this play,
Anna played the princess and Emma played the prince, so
once again doing this whole role where one is playing
a woman, one is playing a man. This was the
(22:22):
first known Black American play set in Africa that I
referred to at the beginning of the episode for their
first So as you can see, based on the types
of stories that they're putting on in their place, they
are doing something that not a lot of people were
doing at the time, if anybody, in the ways they
were doing it, which is their setting plays in the
(22:44):
continent of Africa, kind of touching into this upliftment of heritage.
We're in the reconstruction period, you know, so close to
black people being in bondage and telling stories about people
moving from bondage to freedom and shoring that for themselves
by escaping and that theme. Those themes continued in eighteen
(23:09):
seventy nine as well, when they worked with Black novelist
Pauline Hopkins, who wrote the play Peculiar Sam Or the
Underground Railroad, in which the Higher Sisters were in and
so was the popular black actor Sam Lucas. This play
was about a black family that escaped slavery on a
plantation in Mississippi and make their way to Canada. Lucas
(23:32):
played Sam, that main character. Ana played Virginia, who was
Sam's love interest, and Emma played Juno, which is Sam's sister.
And in this story there's also a romantic tale too,
because Virginia is being forced to marry Jim, who's this
black overseer.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
She doesn't want to do that.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
She doesn't want to be forced into this marriage, of course,
and Virginia and Sam planned to flee, and so they
make their way north and then it's what happens in
the aftermath. And it's one of the earliest portrayals of
a romantic relationship between black characters on stage, and the
first one that's written by a black woman and performed
(24:14):
by an all black cast. Now, Pauline Hopkins has her
own very fascinating history too, like you can read some
of her novels as well. But it also is kind
of indicative of the circles they were running in. Because
Sam Lucas was also very popular, Pauline Hopkins was a
notable figure in the literary world, and there were also
(24:35):
other people that they were in troops with who were
popular for minstrelsy and for stage performance.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
So they were running in.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Some circles where people were acclaimed for their work.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
In eighteen eighty they put.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
On a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin along with the
ideal Uncle Tom Cabin's Company, which was a racially integrated troupe.
They performed in shows like this to supplement their income,
but these shows weren't their main focus. They had their
own repertoire, which we talked about those other plays earlier,
but they really told this line between the popular realm
(25:23):
of minstrelcy that could bring in the interest and that familiarity.
But with their concert work, which a lot of people
weren't used to the concert singing that they were doing.
For black women to be doing this on stage, let
alone the fact that they were producing shows that had
these black people who weren't in blackface and who were
portraying black characters who weren't shown in as much of
(25:47):
a stereotypical light is quote unquote authenticity. And so their father,
though there was a little bit of a history of
friction with their father, Samuel who was the one who
helped men and of course, along with their mother, helped
teach them about performance. Early on, their father, Samuel, he
(26:07):
formed a company called the Colored Musical Comedy Company, and
by the spring of eighteen eighty three, the Higher Sisters
had left the company because maybe because may Hires joined
the company, so this woman named may Hires starts to
be on the bill. Well, really she was a girl
at the time, because she apparently joined as a teenager,
(26:31):
but she was also a contralto singer, and so that
may have created some sort of friction as well, where
she was in competition with Emma. But she soon apparently
married their father, but there was an enormous age gap
between the two of them because he might have been
(26:51):
in his fifties at the time. I'm not so sure
about the veracity around whether this kind of friction is
the thing that caused the Higher Sisters to leave. There
seemed to be some nebulousness around that. But either way,
there was a separation that happened that is pretty fascinating
between Samuel and the work that he was doing and
(27:13):
then the Higher Sisters and the work that they were doing.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
And mind you, they're.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Still young At this time, Samuel went off and did
his own thing. The Higher Sisters began finding work in
other places. They performed together under the Higher Sisters combination,
and then their father renamed his company the SB Hire's
Colored Musical Comedy Company, and you'll see stuff that he
produced under that under that company that May Hires was
(27:43):
also in, but that had nothing to do with what.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
The Higher Sisters were doing.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
So there seemed to be some confusion in historical record
keeping around things being under the Hire's bill, but that
not being Anna and Emma Hires, that just being there
and the work that he was doing on his own.
So Anna and Emma they joined Calendar's Minstrels in New
(28:08):
York and traveled with that troup, and then they performed
with other menstrual troops like McCabe and Young's Minstrels and
John Isham's Troop to Octoroons and the NB Curtis Afro
American Minstrels. But there wasn't any blackface in the shows
that the Higher Sisters put on. So there also seems
(28:32):
to be some weirdness around how many times they got
married who they got married to. It seems like Anna
got married she married a few times, and that Emma
might have married a couple of times. But the one
story that I want to tell is about Emma's marriage
(28:53):
to George Freeman. This is one part of her story
that I really love because she mixed her marriage and
her performance life together because she got married on stage
to George Freeman. So it's just so fascinating to me
(29:14):
to think about her getting on stage and bringing this
part of her personal life into her professional life and
blurring the line between the two and thinking about that
as another branch of the way that she was bringing
what was happening in the world at that time, right
(29:34):
after after Reconstruction, of blending these this movement from enslavement
to freedom and bondage to freedom that is so present
for people, and it's their white audiences that they're showing
these plays too, that they're uncomfortable with and they haven't
(29:56):
met in this way like viewed through artistry at all
maybe yet. And so yeah, this line that she's blending
between performance and what's actually happening in her personal life
and her feelings is very interesting. And also apparently it
was like a crowd of like three hundred people and
there was a banquet or something like that. So yeah,
(30:17):
very interesting that that was a choice of hers. But yeah,
so Emma died around nineteen oh one, not show sure
about the causes, and then Anna died later after touring
the world, she ended up going back to Sacramento. She
died sometime in the nineteen twenties. I've seen different years
for the exact date that she died. But like I said,
(30:41):
at the top, filmmaker Sushio Bibbs has made multiple films
about the Higher Sisters, and if it weren't for them,
a lot of the people after them wouldn't have been
able to produce the kinds of plays they did talk
about blackness and not do black face, and so they
(31:02):
really set the tone for black stage performance. And that's
the story of the Higher Sisters. I'm glad we finally
got to check it off your lists. I had not
heard of the Higher Sisters, but reading about the performances
they put on, it just it sounds so fascinating. And
I do agree there's a lot of elements of like
(31:24):
the personal life and professional life coming in because I'm
honestly also intrigued with just starting so young and working
with your sister for that that time.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I just imagine there.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Were some ups and downs, but it sounds like they
had a great relationship. But yeah, I think having that
and then just the themes that they chose and what
they tried to focus on is really really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
That's a good point.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
Yeah, like hearing about their stories. Of course, their loyalty
to each other, to be like, oh, you brought some
one into a place, me I'm out a man, like,
we're both out, so you're not only losing one, you're
losing both of us. But also that they were such
amazing performers that people love them at such a young age.
It would be fascinating if we could hear what they
sounded like. And you know, one of the things I
(32:15):
do know about music is like when you have a family,
they know each other's harmonies.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
The blend is so natural.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
So I just can't imagine how they sounded, and like
the beauty of the music that the harmonies have made
together too.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, yeah, I wish I could have been there for
some of their performances, and I wish I could have
been there for that marriage. I was like, man, that
would have been super cool to attend like this.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
He was dramatic and they're like, yeah, you're at my wedding,
You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, that's how it went down.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
But that's a good point because I don't think there's
too much out there about how they related to each
other at home or on stage, because we know all
the stories about the performing families and how much controversy
there can be between them and how one person might
(33:09):
not agree with the other, and they were so close
in age, and they were the sisters, they were the
higher sister's combination, even when they brought other people in,
and so, you know, I think it is a testament
to potentially a testament to how much they did enjoy
working together, the fact that they chose to continue on
even after they had differences with their father, and they
(33:35):
faced so much i'm sure opposition just to even though
they were critically well received in a lot of ways,
there were still two black women on stage in the
mid to late eighteen hundreds, So to go through that together,
I'm sure it was difficult. But then maybe also I'm speculating,
(33:58):
but might have been some solace that might have been
solace in that camaraderie in sisterhood as they went through that.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, and from such a young age. I'm sure that
there were some things that other people just could not
relate to that both of them could because this.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Was their life, how they grew up. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yes, once again another great story for HBO, Max or whoever.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Wants to do it right.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Yes, I was honestly surprised about how little Higher Sisters
focused information there is of scholarly lectures that are easily
accessible because a lot of like not a lot of
the time, but sometimes you'll find people who have found
out about the Higher Sisters and made them the focus
(34:50):
of their scholarly work. They've made them their life's work,
or at least for whatever period of research they're in.
They might be someone who's focused, don't the history of
black performance in the United States and the eighteen hundreds,
like they have this specific and the Higher Sisters or
the people that focused on there's not a lot of
that about them, and I.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Wish there were more.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
And you know, like I said, there was that filmmaker
and performer as well as Cecil Bibbs who did create
works about her. But when somebody is or in this
case more than one person are so pioneering in a field,
like so pioneering. You see a little bit more of
(35:32):
that in a robust way that's easily accessible.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
So it is.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
It is quite surprising that they don't have that, so
hope to see more of that.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
Yeah, so I've got the perfect sisters, the Bailey, the
baby ladies. Oh yeah, Oh my gosh, that good idea.
Oh my gosh. I'm just saying. The casting has begun.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Look at you, casting director. That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
We could do this. Maybe it's up to us. We
need to make the hire sister movie we want to
see in the world.
Speaker 5 (36:06):
I'll do the casting, Eves. You've got the directing and
the writing. I got Annie is going to do all
out behind the scenes, get together all the sound, all
the music, all the stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Okay, all right, well, thanks as always Eves for coming on.
We love having you. Can't wait to check up with
you again in a month. Where can the good listeners
find you?
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Y'all can go to my website which is Eves Jeffcote
dot com. That is spelled y V E S J
E F F c A T dot com. You can
get to all the other things from there. You can
contact me from there, but if you want to find
me on Instagram. You can't at not Apologizing, and you
can go back through episodes of stuff mo I've Never
(36:49):
Told You. I'm here for female first very often, so
there are a lot of other episodes where you can
listen to women's accomplishments in the past and how they
were pioneering.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yes, so listeners, please go do that. If you haven't
already all of that. If you would like to contact us,
you can. You can email us at Hello at Stuffhenever
Told You dot com. You can find us on Blue
Sky at mom Stuff Podcast on Instagram, and TikTok at
stuff I Never Told You. We're also on YouTube. We
have some merchandise at common Hero and we have a
buck you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
as always to our super producer Rima and our executive
(37:23):
producer Maya. Thank you and thanks to you for listening.
Stuff I Never Told You is production by Heart Radio
for a podcast from my Heart Radio. You can check
out the heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or if you
listen to your favorite shows
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
I Never told you production by I hurried you. And
today it is time for another edition of Female First,
which means we are once again thrilled to be joined
by the Adventuress, the amazing Eves.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome, Ears, Hello, and thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Oh yes, we always love having you. We love catching
up with you and hearing about your adventures once a month.
So how have you been, Eves.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I've been good. I have been chilling.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I've been going to a lot of arts events, which
is super nice. You know, it's such an interesting place
to be in when you're like trying to integrate into
a new space. But the thing that's interesting about being
arts and cultural spaces is that they're always small kind
of no matter where you go. So even though I'm
(01:02):
so new to this place, I'll be like, oh, I've
seen you before. Oh I've seen you before. And then
I start to realize, like, man, maybe I am such
a like I'm such an archetype, Like I'm such a stereotype.
Like the kind of person I am is the kind
of person you would expect me to be. It's like, Okay,
I have my niches, I guess I guess it is
what it is. But yeah, it's been nice.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It's a small world for sure, the art world. You
can really run into people.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
It is small.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
It is small, and I'm just trying to navigate how
much I like that like, how much of it do
I like?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And how much of it do I not like?
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Because you know, there's this ideal around leaving and going
somewhere else and implanting your plate yourself in a new
place where.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
It's like you get to totally reinvent yourself.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
And you know, you realize because you are still who
you are, that you know that reinvention might not be
as much of a one eighty as you know you
think it could be.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
So it's it's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, that's true, just to see what sticks when you're
when you're in a new place. M hm, you're like, well,
I guess this is who I am. Yeah, you know
what I think about a lot. And I know it's
cold where you are, so you probably don't have an answer.
I've always wanted to check back in with you about
(02:26):
your surfing.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
That was actually just on my mind.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Okay, So I don't know if I mentioned it on
the show before or if I talked to y'all outside
of it about it. But I got some piercings and
that's why I put a pause on the surfing because
they are you're not supposed to submerge them. I baby,
my piercing is like, I cannot because my skin gets
so sensitive.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
So I was so.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Sad that I had to put my surfing lessons on pause.
But I was literally, it's so funny you asked because
I was dating about it today.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I was like, Oh, I'm so ready to get back
to surfing.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
And I was actually just messaging my piercer like earlier
this week about like some issues I was having with.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Healing, and I'm like, you know what, He's like, this
is fine, this is fine.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
I'm like, he gave me two and a half months,
so it's been longer than that for me. So I
feel like I'm ready to get back out there. I
have some other things going on that I have to, Like,
it'll be it'll still probably be another month before I
get back into it, but I think I think it's September.
I'm gonna I'm gonna start back up. The weather's still
good regardless, people are still out surfing. I've been to
(03:27):
the surfer's corner here there's everybody still out on their boards.
So I think September, October, November. I'm not gonna put
a hard date on it yet because I have some
travel coming up, but yeah, it's gonna you'll get an
update about it soon.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Let's let's just say that I'm very excited. I think
about this all the time. I'm like, wonder if Eve's
just been able to surf again?
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Can I tell you when?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
This is gonna sound so superficial, But one thing I've
been thinking about with surfing is those like I'm so
ready to put on the wet suit again because they're
so cute. I'm like, I really want a yellow wetsuit.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I need a yellow wetsuit.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
This is this is how I do when I get
into a new thing. I get all the gear and
accoutremont and sometimes I don't finish doing the thing, and
so I'm like, I gotta I gotta go get a
yellow wetsuit I got. I don't want to rent a
wet suit again. Next time, I gotta get my own.
I want it to be yellow. Why are they all
so boring? I don't know if there's a reason for that.
But that's the one thing I'm thinking about.
Speaker 5 (04:25):
You know what, though, when you actually like excited about something,
when you get all this stuff and I calculate this,
it's like, if I do this this many times, it's
paid for itself. Like that's how I work through most
of my hobbies.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Yes, but then you end up needing a whole other
room for all the things you've now accumulated that you
may not use super frequently but maybe from time to time.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Right, but it will remind you like you were doing it,
You did this, you did it.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yes, Yeah, I think it can be motivational too.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
If it's something that excites you that I get to
fit on this yellow whatsuit, that you're even more excited
to keep doing the thing, that's true. Yeah, yeah, I
kind of know the answer to this. But what are
y'all's experiences with dancing?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Okay, I was waiting on Samantha.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
I will say, let's see my experiences with dancing. I
love dancing just as a form of expression, as a
way of like moving through emotion, as a way of
expressing joy. I just I love dancing in a recreational
(05:45):
and just.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
It's an activity that.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
I love to do with myself that cheers me up
and that I know I can take with me anywhere,
And so I really loved dancing in that way. I
was taking dancing lessons for a little bit here, but
I had to put that to the side to make
room for other things. But I grew up making up
little dances with like family members and friends and performing
them for other family members.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Hopefully those family members we.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Performed for don't remember them, but I'm sure some of
them live in the bags of their minds somewhere. Thank God,
I'm pretty sure none of it's captured on video. So
I've been so dance is a big part of my life,
and I used to watch the dance shows. I used
to watch America's Dance Crew, like, oh yeah, I had
(06:31):
a Jabbawaki shirt. Yeah, yeah, I was that kid, And yeah,
I think dancing's super cool. Love I love it as
an art form. I love all different kinds of dances.
I watch dance troops at theaters and other live performances,
and yeah, it's cool, love it.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
I think the listeners because I've talked about it plenty
of times. Though I love dance, dance is one of
my favorite things in which I suddenly got into zoomba
slash hip hop, which sounds we were saying it out
like out of my mouth. And so I really got
into teaching because of that, and because I like to
make my own routines and now I can make other
(07:13):
people do them too, and I feel cool because I'm like, a,
look at this, that's what I made up. They're not
really hard, they're not that difficult, but they're really fun.
And when I do connect with the students, they seem
to really like.
Speaker 6 (07:25):
It and love it.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
And so this makes me feel like a whole new level.
And that's kind of what I did as a kid too,
is like I never I took this.
Speaker 6 (07:30):
This is for like a week.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
It's expensive, like hobbies like that are ridiculously expensive. And
my low self esteem was like if I don't know
it immediately, which is impossible.
Speaker 6 (07:42):
You can't know a routine.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
Within thirty seconds but yet or the first two times.
But some people are actually ridiculously talented and able to
pick up choreo like that. So I was not like
that as a kid, so I immediately quit because also
performing in front of people was not my thing, which
is odd now that I'm teaching, but it feels different
that way.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
So but I love it. It feels like it is.
Speaker 5 (08:05):
My life, part of my life, and if I didn't
have it, I get really sad, Like that's that's for me,
my social stuff that I don't have to talk to
people for long periods of time, but for an hour
we are all doing something in common together to the
same music and having a good time, not thinking about
anything else.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
So I absolutely love it.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
It is a huge part and so obviously very active
dance also hopefully it's keeping my mind together because you know,
sometimes I forget things.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
It's beautiful. Sounds like you have a relationship with dance.
Speaker 6 (08:37):
Yes, I think I do.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
I think I do.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
We'll see, Yeah, I think so. I think so, Samantha,
I also love dance. I grew up taking ballet. The
thing about the wetsuit, it reminded me like one of
my favorite parts was the day you got your costume.
That was like the tling. Unless it was a bad
costume in this it was not a good day, but
(09:01):
usually it was fun, it was really exciting. I think
that was my favorite part was the costume. Yeah, okay,
what about the movement? Though you can't I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I actually remember.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I think I was in fifth grade and we did
Swan Lake, like a fifth grade version of Swan Lake,
and I remember the moves like I still remember, like
how we had to because it had like an intersecting
part where everybody had to kind of move between each other.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I thought it was really cool. I liked I liked
doing it.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I just remember the costume was like that was the
most exciting part to me. And then I was in
I've done a couple of dancing classes over the years,
and then in college, I was in an organization that
had a lot of dancing involved with it, and that
was fun, but those were mostly goofy dances. And I
did want to bring up two NERD related things. I
(09:57):
loved DDR growing up.
Speaker 7 (10:00):
Every day, every single we would mess up, like you
would have those pads at home, and we would play
it so much that we had to like surgically operate
on the pad to move the censor back to where
it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And there are certain songs I can't hear without like
never Ending Story that's a DDR song. I can't hear
without remembering the move, like the sound of the footstops.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
So I like, I like dancing video games.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I know that does not at all translate to skill
in the dance world.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I think in video dance video game dance world.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
And also I'm glad you brought up Eve's like media
around dancing because there are a lot of good horror
movies with dance.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Hold on, wait which one that jump?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
There's a bunch of like Suspiria, uh, Black Small.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
I wanted it to have to do with it like
ballet feels like or interpretive dance.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Well, yeah, there's a all genre out there, creepy dances.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (11:11):
Oh yeah, Megan, But yes.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
That is true.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
I've never seen it. That's the only part I know
of it, to be honest, I'm.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Just saying there there's there's also reality TV shows, but
there are horror movies as well. And you know, Samith,
aren't we doing for our next feminist movie Friday?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Isn't it a dance?
Speaker 6 (11:36):
It's not a horror movie.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
However, it's not a horror movie.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
There's a whole genre of non horror dance movies as well.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
Oh yeah, Like eventually we might have to go into
like step up and like you guys served and all
of that stuff.
Speaker 6 (11:49):
Stop the Yard, which still is one of my favorite.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
But yes, we are going to do center Stage because
I was like, oh, I've talked about it so often,
but I'm like, this is one of those Holt classics.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
That we need to talk about.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Also, it was it was Zoe Saldana's first movie, and
I feel like that needs to be recognized as well,
because you know.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I haven't seen it, so I'm excited. That's that's kind
of fun.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
I forgot to mention a critical I think point when
you ask me the question about my relationship to dance,
and that's that I actually wanted to be a backup
hip hop dancer for a while. Like that is another
path that my life could have taken. I won, like
a free hip hop dance when I went to some
I was at some conference and I won a free
(12:38):
lesson once and I.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Never did it, and I regretted that, Yeah, but I could,
I would have. I did dream of it. I actually
that was another path my life could have taken.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
But that those they're infinite paths for me because I've
been to so many things.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I just got to pick and choose.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And one life you're professional surfer, you know, Yeah, all
these paths that.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Eves is so much cooler than this, Eves.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this
is a first for female first where we're talking about sisters.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Yeah, I think it is a first.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, well, here.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
We go, and that makes me want to jump into
another musical or they dance that song sisters.
Speaker 8 (13:24):
Anyway, moving back, I'm very.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Excited to talk about these sisters. So who are we
discussing today, Eves? We're talking about the Higher Sisters. And
I didn't even think about it being a first because
they've been in my list for so long to talk about.
We've talked about other people in theater like the Higher
Sisters are.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
And in music and in performance. But the Higher are
really special, so I'm glad we get to talk about
them today. They starred in the first known black American
play that was set in Africa, and the filmmaker Sushiel Bibbs,
who has made films about them and researched their history,
(14:18):
says that they also created the first American musicals. But
what it comes down to is that the Higher Sisters
were pioneering in the field of theater in musical theater
and concert in performance in America, and their history is
super cool, so I am excited to talk about them today.
(14:42):
Anna Meda Hires and Emma Louise Hires. Yes, they've got
a really fascinating story. So shall we get into it?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
So, Anna Meda Hires was born in eighteen fifty five
and Emma Louise Hires was born in eighteen fifty seven,
and there was some sort of migration from New York
to California that might have been sometime around eighteen fifty six,
not so sure about the exact year, but basically after
the Goal Rush, and they grew up in Sacramento.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
The parents were named Samuel B. Hires and Annie E.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Hires, and Samuel owned a barber shop in Sacramento, though
he later left that behind to work more on managing
his daughter's careers.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And Annie was a crafts person.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
She apparently offered classes to women in things like embroidery
and leather work. And both of them had some musical skills,
seemed to be amateur opera singers, and they were able
to teach some of their daughters some of those skills
around performance and music as it so often goes, there
were quite a few discrepancies in the sources about where
(15:54):
they were born, when they were born, and how old
they were at a given time, but they guarded in performance.
They started in performance pretty early on. Samuel and Annie
set their daughters up with piano and vocal lessons, and
they learned from a German teacher named Hugo Sank and
an opera singer named Josephine Dormy. And apparently Samuel told
(16:19):
his daughters that he would take them to Europe for
more training, although that never happened. But they, as you'll
find out here, soon went on to have an illustrious
career regardless.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
The sisters started.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
Singing at parties to gain experience performing, and in eighteen
sixty seven they had their professional stage debut at the
Metropolitan Theater in Sacramento. Now remember that I said they
were born in eighteen fifty five. In eighteen fifty seven,
and this is a mere ten years after the younger sister,
(16:52):
Emma Luis, was born, so very young when they had
their debut, Anna made a Hires was a soprano, and
Emma had a contralto voice, and they would perform male
and female roles in duets together, and they were giving
recitals around San Francisco and Oakland, and so in eighteen
(17:15):
seventy one they went on their first tour across the
US under their father's management. They performed in places like Utah, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio,
New York, and other places on the East coast, and
in Salt Lake City, for instance, they performed John Barnett's
opera The Mountain Self in that Anna plays a fairy
(17:38):
who falls in love with a young man and that
man is played by Emma. So their shows would include
a bunch of different kinds of pieces and music. They
would have operatic pieces, classical ballads, spirituals, and at the
time that was pretty expansive because there weren't a ton
of Black Americans who were performing certain music at the time.
(18:02):
In eighteen seventy two, they even headlined a festival called P. S.
Gilmore's A Great Piece Jubilee. And in eighteen seventy six
they performed a musical drama in Massachusetts and that was
commissioned for them by their management company, Redpath Lyceum Bureau.
This musical drama was written by a white playwright and
(18:22):
a former Union soldier Joseph Bradford, and it was called
Out of the Wilderness. The Higher Sisters and others who
were previously in the Georgia Minstrels joined the troops. So
we've talked about minstreul ce before in previous episodes of
Female First, but minstrel c was big at this time
in the mid eighteen hundreds to late eighteen hundreds, and
(18:43):
that was the context of blackface minstrel sy and like,
you know, this white playwright Joseph Bradford who had created.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Out of the Wilderness.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
You know, it was a lot of white people who
began these minstrel troops and put together these shows. So
that was it's still even though the Higher Sisters are pioneering,
they're still working with familiar frameworks and then so people
are going to be familiar with coming to shows like this,
(19:15):
but they are used to white people performing in blackface,
black people performing in blackface, and they're performing minstrel shows
where there are a lot of stereotypes of how black
people are viewed at the time that they're seeing on stage.
So they toured this show throughout New England and later
(19:36):
in the year they changed the show titled to out
of bondage. So the show is about an enslaved family
and friends who are living in the South pre Civil war,
and war ensues, the Union troops come and some of
the enslaved people that are in that are featured in
the show, they go north, and years later they all
(19:57):
meet up and the people who have went north become
professional vocalists, and of course that becomes this medium for
them to be able to sing this concert in the
last act of the show, and apparently there was a
quote from Mark Twain and the marketing material from Redpath,
and the quote was this, I went a mile and
a half in the most furious tempest of wind and
(20:18):
snow that I have seen for five years to see
the plantation sketches of the Higher's troop and hear the
exquisite music. And I would go three miles through just
such a tempest to have that pleasant and satisfactory experience again,
your friend Samuel L.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Clemens.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
So of course the marketing material is going to do
what it does. They're going to uplift the Higher Sister's performance.
It's going to be laudatory. But as they do more performances,
they are getting positive critical reception.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
In newspapers.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
It's not always good reception because of the context of
what the show is about.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
But a lot of the.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Time people are praising their singing abilities, and their comedic abilities,
and their performance abilities in general. So sometimes it's more
of a technical laudatory like feedback that they're getting, but
it is still generally positive. They performed this play out
(21:19):
of bondage until at least eighteen ninety one, so for
many years this was part of their repertoire. In eighteen
seventy nine, they performed in a play written by Es
Getchel called Erlena the African Princess. They performed it in
Indianapolis and other venues in Illinois and Iowa, and when
they got back to San Francisco they performed it there too.
(21:41):
They later performed it in Oregon, so in many places
they were showing this. In the story, a king vanishes
Princess Erlina, who is the rightful heir to the throne.
What ends up happening is that the king's son falls
for Princess Arlena. So you've created this external conflict, like
how could the sun go against his father? He and
(22:01):
a group of his allies try to rescue the princess
and they get caught up in the process, but the
son escapes and eventually he overthrows the king. In this play,
Anna played the princess and Emma played the prince, so
once again doing this whole role where one is playing
a woman, one is playing a man. This was the
(22:22):
first known Black American play set in Africa that I
referred to at the beginning of the episode for their
first So as you can see, based on the types
of stories that they're putting on in their place, they
are doing something that not a lot of people were
doing at the time, if anybody, in the ways they
were doing it, which is their setting plays in the
(22:44):
continent of Africa, kind of touching into this upliftment of heritage.
We're in the reconstruction period, you know, so close to
black people being in bondage and telling stories about people
moving from bondage to freedom and shoring that for themselves
by escaping and that theme. Those themes continued in eighteen
(23:09):
seventy nine as well, when they worked with Black novelist
Pauline Hopkins, who wrote the play Peculiar Sam Or the
Underground Railroad, in which the Higher Sisters were in and
so was the popular black actor Sam Lucas. This play
was about a black family that escaped slavery on a
plantation in Mississippi and make their way to Canada. Lucas
(23:32):
played Sam, that main character. Ana played Virginia, who was
Sam's love interest, and Emma played Juno, which is Sam's sister.
And in this story there's also a romantic tale too,
because Virginia is being forced to marry Jim, who's this
black overseer.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
She doesn't want to do that.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
She doesn't want to be forced into this marriage, of course,
and Virginia and Sam planned to flee, and so they
make their way north and then it's what happens in
the aftermath. And it's one of the earliest portrayals of
a romantic relationship between black characters on stage, and the
first one that's written by a black woman and performed
(24:14):
by an all black cast. Now, Pauline Hopkins has her
own very fascinating history too, like you can read some
of her novels as well. But it also is kind
of indicative of the circles they were running in. Because
Sam Lucas was also very popular, Pauline Hopkins was a
notable figure in the literary world, and there were also
(24:35):
other people that they were in troops with who were
popular for minstrelsy and for stage performance.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
So they were running in.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Some circles where people were acclaimed for their work.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
In eighteen eighty they put.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
On a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin along with the
ideal Uncle Tom Cabin's Company, which was a racially integrated troupe.
They performed in shows like this to supplement their income,
but these shows weren't their main focus. They had their
own repertoire, which we talked about those other plays earlier,
but they really told this line between the popular realm
(25:23):
of minstrelcy that could bring in the interest and that familiarity.
But with their concert work, which a lot of people
weren't used to the concert singing that they were doing.
For black women to be doing this on stage, let
alone the fact that they were producing shows that had
these black people who weren't in blackface and who were
portraying black characters who weren't shown in as much of
(25:47):
a stereotypical light is quote unquote authenticity. And so their father,
though there was a little bit of a history of
friction with their father, Samuel who was the one who
helped men and of course, along with their mother, helped
teach them about performance. Early on, their father, Samuel, he
(26:07):
formed a company called the Colored Musical Comedy Company, and
by the spring of eighteen eighty three, the Higher Sisters
had left the company because maybe because may Hires joined
the company, so this woman named may Hires starts to
be on the bill. Well, really she was a girl
at the time, because she apparently joined as a teenager,
(26:31):
but she was also a contralto singer, and so that
may have created some sort of friction as well, where
she was in competition with Emma. But she soon apparently
married their father, but there was an enormous age gap
between the two of them because he might have been
(26:51):
in his fifties at the time. I'm not so sure
about the veracity around whether this kind of friction is
the thing that caused the Higher Sisters to leave. There
seemed to be some nebulousness around that. But either way,
there was a separation that happened that is pretty fascinating
between Samuel and the work that he was doing and
(27:13):
then the Higher Sisters and the work that they were doing.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
And mind you, they're.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Still young At this time, Samuel went off and did
his own thing. The Higher Sisters began finding work in
other places. They performed together under the Higher Sisters combination,
and then their father renamed his company the SB Hire's
Colored Musical Comedy Company, and you'll see stuff that he
produced under that under that company that May Hires was
(27:43):
also in, but that had nothing to do with what.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
The Higher Sisters were doing.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
So there seemed to be some confusion in historical record
keeping around things being under the Hire's bill, but that
not being Anna and Emma Hires, that just being there
and the work that he was doing on his own.
So Anna and Emma they joined Calendar's Minstrels in New
(28:08):
York and traveled with that troup, and then they performed
with other menstrual troops like McCabe and Young's Minstrels and
John Isham's Troop to Octoroons and the NB Curtis Afro
American Minstrels. But there wasn't any blackface in the shows
that the Higher Sisters put on. So there also seems
(28:32):
to be some weirdness around how many times they got
married who they got married to. It seems like Anna
got married she married a few times, and that Emma
might have married a couple of times. But the one
story that I want to tell is about Emma's marriage
(28:53):
to George Freeman. This is one part of her story
that I really love because she mixed her marriage and
her performance life together because she got married on stage
to George Freeman. So it's just so fascinating to me
(29:14):
to think about her getting on stage and bringing this
part of her personal life into her professional life and
blurring the line between the two and thinking about that
as another branch of the way that she was bringing
what was happening in the world at that time, right
(29:34):
after after Reconstruction, of blending these this movement from enslavement
to freedom and bondage to freedom that is so present
for people, and it's their white audiences that they're showing
these plays too, that they're uncomfortable with and they haven't
(29:56):
met in this way like viewed through artistry at all
maybe yet. And so yeah, this line that she's blending
between performance and what's actually happening in her personal life
and her feelings is very interesting. And also apparently it
was like a crowd of like three hundred people and
there was a banquet or something like that. So yeah,
(30:17):
very interesting that that was a choice of hers. But yeah,
so Emma died around nineteen oh one, not show sure
about the causes, and then Anna died later after touring
the world, she ended up going back to Sacramento. She
died sometime in the nineteen twenties. I've seen different years
for the exact date that she died. But like I said,
(30:41):
at the top, filmmaker Sushio Bibbs has made multiple films
about the Higher Sisters, and if it weren't for them,
a lot of the people after them wouldn't have been
able to produce the kinds of plays they did talk
about blackness and not do black face, and so they
(31:02):
really set the tone for black stage performance. And that's
the story of the Higher Sisters. I'm glad we finally
got to check it off your lists. I had not
heard of the Higher Sisters, but reading about the performances
they put on, it just it sounds so fascinating. And
I do agree there's a lot of elements of like
(31:24):
the personal life and professional life coming in because I'm
honestly also intrigued with just starting so young and working
with your sister for that that time.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I just imagine there.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Were some ups and downs, but it sounds like they
had a great relationship. But yeah, I think having that
and then just the themes that they chose and what
they tried to focus on is really really fascinating.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
That's a good point.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
Yeah, like hearing about their stories. Of course, their loyalty
to each other, to be like, oh, you brought some
one into a place, me I'm out a man, like,
we're both out, so you're not only losing one, you're
losing both of us. But also that they were such
amazing performers that people love them at such a young age.
It would be fascinating if we could hear what they
sounded like. And you know, one of the things I
(32:15):
do know about music is like when you have a family,
they know each other's harmonies.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
The blend is so natural.
Speaker 5 (32:22):
So I just can't imagine how they sounded, and like
the beauty of the music that the harmonies have made
together too.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, yeah, I wish I could have been there for
some of their performances, and I wish I could have
been there for that marriage. I was like, man, that
would have been super cool to attend like this.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
He was dramatic and they're like, yeah, you're at my wedding,
You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, that's how it went down.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
But that's a good point because I don't think there's
too much out there about how they related to each
other at home or on stage, because we know all
the stories about the performing families and how much controversy
there can be between them and how one person might
(33:09):
not agree with the other, and they were so close
in age, and they were the sisters, they were the
higher sister's combination, even when they brought other people in,
and so, you know, I think it is a testament
to potentially a testament to how much they did enjoy
working together, the fact that they chose to continue on
even after they had differences with their father, and they
(33:35):
faced so much i'm sure opposition just to even though
they were critically well received in a lot of ways,
there were still two black women on stage in the
mid to late eighteen hundreds, So to go through that together,
I'm sure it was difficult. But then maybe also I'm speculating,
(33:58):
but might have been some solace that might have been
solace in that camaraderie in sisterhood as they went through that.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, and from such a young age. I'm sure that
there were some things that other people just could not
relate to that both of them could because this.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Was their life, how they grew up. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yes, once again another great story for HBO, Max or whoever.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Wants to do it right.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Yes, I was honestly surprised about how little Higher Sisters
focused information there is of scholarly lectures that are easily
accessible because a lot of like not a lot of
the time, but sometimes you'll find people who have found
out about the Higher Sisters and made them the focus
(34:50):
of their scholarly work. They've made them their life's work,
or at least for whatever period of research they're in.
They might be someone who's focused, don't the history of
black performance in the United States and the eighteen hundreds,
like they have this specific and the Higher Sisters or
the people that focused on there's not a lot of
that about them, and I.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
Wish there were more.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
And you know, like I said, there was that filmmaker
and performer as well as Cecil Bibbs who did create
works about her. But when somebody is or in this
case more than one person are so pioneering in a field,
like so pioneering. You see a little bit more of
(35:32):
that in a robust way that's easily accessible.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
So it is.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
It is quite surprising that they don't have that, so
hope to see more of that.
Speaker 6 (35:44):
Yeah, so I've got the perfect sisters, the Bailey, the
baby ladies. Oh yeah, Oh my gosh, that good idea.
Oh my gosh. I'm just saying. The casting has begun.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Look at you, casting director. That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
We could do this. Maybe it's up to us. We
need to make the hire sister movie we want to
see in the world.
Speaker 5 (36:06):
I'll do the casting, Eves. You've got the directing and
the writing. I got Annie is going to do all
out behind the scenes, get together all the sound, all
the music, all the stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Okay, all right, well, thanks as always Eves for coming on.
We love having you. Can't wait to check up with
you again in a month. Where can the good listeners
find you?
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Y'all can go to my website which is Eves Jeffcote
dot com. That is spelled y V E S J
E F F c A T dot com. You can
get to all the other things from there. You can
contact me from there, but if you want to find
me on Instagram. You can't at not Apologizing, and you
can go back through episodes of stuff mo I've Never
(36:49):
Told You. I'm here for female first very often, so
there are a lot of other episodes where you can
listen to women's accomplishments in the past and how they
were pioneering.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yes, so listeners, please go do that. If you haven't
already all of that. If you would like to contact us,
you can. You can email us at Hello at Stuffhenever
Told You dot com. You can find us on Blue
Sky at mom Stuff Podcast on Instagram, and TikTok at
stuff I Never Told You. We're also on YouTube. We
have some merchandise at common Hero and we have a
buck you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks
as always to our super producer Rima and our executive
(37:23):
producer Maya. Thank you and thanks to you for listening.
Stuff I Never Told You is production by Heart Radio
for a podcast from my Heart Radio. You can check
out the heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or if you
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