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Hattie McDaniel won her Oscar for her performance in 1939’s “Gone With the Wind.”
CNN –
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) – the organization behind the Oscars – will honor Hattie McDaniel posthumously by reinstating her missing Best Supporting Actress Oscar, which she won in 1940 for “Gone With the Wind.”
AMPAS announced Tuesday, along with the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, that it will present a “substitute” Oscar to Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College on Oct. 1 at a ceremony titled “Hattie’s Come Home.” of Fine Arts will give.
McDaniel was the first black actress to win an acting Oscar for her supporting role as Mammy in 1939’s “Gone With the Wind.” At the 12th Academy Awards in 1940, McDaniel sat apart from the film’s other nominees in the segregated Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel, the AMPAS press release said.
In her acceptance speech at the time, McDaniel said her win “made me very, very humble and I will always look at it as a beacon for everything I can do in the future.” I sincerely hope that I will always be an honor to my race and the film industry will prove.”
After her death in 1952, McDaniel bequeathed her award – which was a plaque rather than a statuette, as was common for supporting actor awards in the late ’30s and early ’40s – to Howard University. The award was displayed in the university’s theater department until the late 1960s, but its current whereabouts are unknown, according to AMPAS.
Next week’s ceremony will feature opening remarks from Phylicia Rashad, dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University.
“When I was a student at Howard University’s College of Fine Arts, then the Department of Drama, I often sat and gazed in wonder at the Oscar awarded to Ms. Hattie McDaniel,” he told Rashad. “I am thrilled that this Oscar is returning to what is now the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at Howard University. This immense piece of history will be on display again at the School of Fine Arts for our students to be inspired by. Mrs. Hattie is coming home!”
After McDaniel’s history-making win, it would be another 51 years before another black woman would win an acting Oscar, as Whoopi Goldberg took home the award for “Ghost” in 1991.