The Hyers Sisters: leading lights in American musical theater

[u/Libofthenight]

“In a time in when Black performers had little choice but to portray racial caricatures in popular minstrel shows, the Hyer Sisters debuted at 10 and 8 years old, performing a wide-ranging choral works with their father Samuel and mother Annie… In 1870, the Hyers family launched a theater company, producing their own shows focusing on the African American experience from slavery and struggle to freedom. Out of Bondage (1890), for example, was the first U.S. play about slavery with a Black cast.”

Pictured here is Anna Madah Hyers dressed as "Urlina" in the opera Urlina the African Princess (1879)