Emma Harris: Everything To Know About Her

Emma Harris was an American-born Russian actress, singer, dancer, cabaret artist, and writer born in Augusta, Georgia, the U.S. She was known as “Galima Oriedo: The Black Nightingale”.

Emma Harris: Bio Summary

Early Life

Emma Harris was born Emma Elizabeth Matthews on October 9, 1871, in Augusta, Georgia, the U.S. Her parents are Sarah Green and Richard Matthews. She was born into a poor Negro family in the southern city of Augusta, along Georgia’s Savannah River.

Emma’s mother was employed as a washerwoman, scrubbing clothes for the local white families while her father labored daily in one of the city’s numerous cotton processing mills. Emma is not the only child of her parents. She has two siblings Thomas who was born in 1873 and Josephine who was born in 1880.

Emma’s parents left the Phinizy plantation to seek a better life and opportunities in the city after the American Civil War in 1865 ended. The family settled in an old brick tenement on 319 Houston Street by the year 1880.

Emma Harris was a student of the first public high school for African-Americans in Georgia, Edmund Asa Ware High School before she went to continue her studies at the Negro Mission College, which opened in 1883 after she was sent to Norfolk, Virginia to stay with her widowed Aunt, Hattie Matthews.

Her aunt passed away and she was left stranded in Virginia with no place to go but instead of her to go back home, in 1892, she went to New York and found work as a chambermaid.

Emma Harris Career

Emma Harris was an American-born Russian actress, singer, dancer, cabaret artist, and writer. When she started her singing career, she was singing in the Trinity Baptist Church Choir because of her staunchly religious parents’ disapproval of her career as an entertainer.

Emma did domestic work for almost five years. She come across a copy of the New York Herald while she was riding a trolley to work. It was around April 3, 1901. She noticed an advertisement posted by German theatrical impresario Paula Kohn-Wöllner, seeking seven Negro women with the ability to sing and dance for a concert tour of Germany.

Emma replied to the advert and was promptly accepted. Kohn-Wöllner, who previously managed two theatrical troupes in the 1890s in Leipzig and Chemnitz, had made a trip to New York to visit her two married sisters when she got the idea to organize a Negro theatrical troupe to tour across Europe.

Emma Harris, a 26-year-old singer from the Oriental America show, Olga Burgoyne, a 19-year-old singer from Brooklyn, Fannie Wise, a 26-year-old pianist from Kentucky, Florence Collins, a 19-year-old from Baltimore, Alverta Burley and 32-year-old housewife from Virginia, S.T. Jubrey were among the troupe.

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Joining them was 20-year-old Corette Hardy but she was left behind as a replacement in case any of the women should quit the newly christened “Louisiana Amazon Guard” troupe. The six women applied for their first passports and Ms. Kohn-Wöllner paid for their travel expenses.

They boarded the S.S. Deutschland, heading for Germany and they 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. The troupe spent two successful weeks at Goteborg’s Circus Madigan and two more weeks at Stockholm’s Svensalen Variety Restaurant.

The troupe returned to Germany in December to entertain at Berlin’s Circus Schumann where they ended the year, preparing for another year of extensive touring. Along the line, Fannie Wise and S.T. Jubrey suddenly quit the group and returned home to the United States.

They were replaced by Corette Hardy and Fannie Smith, a 20-year-old from Philadelphia who was promptly brought over to Europe. After twenty-one months of touring across Europe, during their Dresden engagement, the entire troupe walked out on their German impresario and Kohn-Wöllner was taken to court and accused of exploiting them financially.

Ollie Burgoyne who was the lead performer became the new manager. The group was left with four women as Ollie Burgoyne and Florence Collins renewed their American passports and departed for London to join the cast of Hurtig & Seamon’s In Dahomey.

The four remaining women continued performing around Germany for the next three months before departing for the Russian Empire and they became the “4 Ebony Belles”. Later the group dissolved, Alverta Burley married Oliver E. Brodie and they toured as “Brodie & Brodie”.

Emma Harris convinced Coretté Hardy and Fannie Smith to remain in Russia and they formed the “Harris Trio”. Harris Trio and Ollie Bourgoyne and Jennie Scheper (from the Florida Creole Girls) formed a new company known as the “Creole Troupe”.

The Harris Trio moved to Moscow after they witnessed the Bloody Sunday riots. They worked at the Aumont Theater but later while performing in the city of Vyatka, the trio decided to dissolve and Corette and Fannie departed for Poland.

Emma Harris worked as a solo artist and returned to Helsinki in March 1905, performing for two weeks at the popular Princess Restaurant and then two more weeks in the Finnish city of Tampere at the Seurahuoneen Sali.

Emma became the “Galima Oriedo: The Black Nightingale” after she decided to keep the African persona that an English-speaking scientist and museum curator named Baranov had created for her. She performed songs in German, French, Polish, and Russian.

Her film debut was Satan’s Woman (Zhenshchina Satana). Emma appeared in the comedy film, Feet Up! (Nogi Vverkh). 1926 marked the end of her career as a successful actress as she sought employment as a textile worker at the Proletarsky Trud Silk Mill. She became one of the lead speakers for the International Red Aid (MOPR).

Emma Harris’ Personal Life

Emma Harris met and married local janitor Joseph B. Harris on December 23, 1896. They settled into a small apartment in Brooklyn, where they hoped to start a family. They had one child who suddenly passed away. They divorced in 1907.

Emma met Baranov and they started dating but their relationship also ended. Emma met 28-year-old Russian peasant, Alexander Ivanovich Mizikin during the summer of 1911, while in Tbilisi.

Alexander became Emma’s manager and then her husband. They got married in 1911. She Russified her name, becoming Emma Richardsovna Mizikina (Эммы Ричардовна Мизикина). After fifteen years of marriage, they divorced in 1926.

Emma Harris’ Death

Emma Harris was hospitalized and placed in a nursing home due to her failing health. During Emma Harris’ last days, she mentioned that she didn’t want to remain in the United States but wanted to return home to the Soviet Union and was saving funds for that.

Emma Harris was unable to return and by 1940, she was in Brooklyn, living with her nephew, Richard Matthews, and his family where she remained, hoping to return to Russia after the war until her death. She died on December 31, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York City, at age 69.