This day in history: Happy heavenly birthday, Hattie McDaniel!

“I sincerely hope that I shall always be a credit to my race, and to the motion picture industry.”

Born in 1895, Hattie was an actress, a singer, a songwriter, and a comedienne. Many of us know her as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Hattie was her parents’ 13th child. She left school in 1910 to become a performer with her brother in traveling minstrel groups.

In the 1920s, Hattie worked with Professor George Morrison’s orchestra for several years. During that time, she was invited to perform on Denver’s KOA radio station, becoming one of the first Black women to perform on radio.

McDaniel got her first small movie role in 1931, as an extra in a Hollywood musical. After that, she was featured in many movies, which helped her gain the attention of Hollywood directors, but also brought her a lot of criticism as the main roles she played were either a maid or a cook in nearly 40 films. To that, she replied, “Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn’t, I’d be making $7 a week being one.”

Even though Hattie was becoming Hollywood famous, Georgia’s Jim Crow laws at that time didn’t allow her, along with all the Black actors in Gone with the Wind, to attend the film’s premiere at the Loew’s Grand Theatre in 1939. Regardless, Hattie became the first ever Black person to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, at the 12th Academy Awards in 1940.

During World War II she continued acting in Hollywood, mainly playing the same roles, and the conflicts she’d had with civil rights leaders like Walter White, leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), also continued. In many interviews, she’d answered her critics and defended her work, in an interview in the Hollywood Reporter in 1947, she tried to make her critics see the progress the film industry had made in hiring Black actors  during her career, she said, “I have never apologized for the roles I play,” she wrote, adding, “I believe my critics think the public more naïve than it actually is.”

In 1951, McDaniel started filming for The Beulah Show. At the time of the filming, she suffered a heart attack and was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Her breast cancer was fatal. McDaniel died on October 26, 1952, in Los Angeles. She was 57 years old.

After her death, she was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was also inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975 and honored with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp in 2006.

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