LOS ANGELES — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Tuesday, Sept. 26, that it will present a replacement for “Gone With the Wind” actress Hattie McDaniel’s long-missing Academy Award to Howard University.
In 1940, McDaniel made history as the first Black person to be nominated for and win a competitive Academy Award for her supporting performance as “Mammy” in “Gone with the Wind” (1939). At the 12th Academy Awards ceremony at the segregated Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel, McDaniel and her guest were seated separately from the film’s other nominees.
McDaniel received not an Oscar statuette but a plaque, as was customary for supporting performance winners from 1936 to 1942. Though its whereabouts today are unknown, McDaniel’s award stands out in Academy history — it would be 51 years before another Black woman would win an acting Oscar.
McDaniel bequeathed her Academy Award to Howard University upon her death in 1952. The award was displayed at the university’s drama department until the late 1960s, when the plaque disappeared.
“Hattie McDaniel was a groundbreaking artist who changed the course of cinema and impacted generations of performers who followed her,” according to a statement from Jacqueline Stewart, director and president of the Academy Museum, and Academy CEO Bill Kramer. “We are thrilled to present a replacement of Hattie McDaniel’s Academy Award to Howard University. This momentous occasion will celebrate Hattie McDaniel’s remarkable craft and historic win.”
McDaniel’s plaque will be replaced by a proper Oscar statuette, and will be presented at a celebration of McDaniel’s life and legacy at Howard University’s Ira Aldridge Theater in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 1.
The “Hattie’s Come Home” celebration will include opening remarks by Phylicia Rashad, dean of the university’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, the performance of a medley of songs from current students and faculty of the college, and an excerpt of “Boulevard of Bold Dreams,” a work by Los Angeles playwright-filmmaker LaDarrion Williams.
