Who was the first Black actor to win an Academy Award?
It’s been almost a century since the first edition of the Academy Awards took place in 1929, but relative to the number of people who’ve been awarded acting prizes, the list of Black winners remains sparse.
There have only ever been five Black winners of the ‘Best Actor’ trophy, four of which came in the 21st century. Sidney Poitier made history when Lillies of the Field won him the most prestigious accolade in the industry in 1963, but it would be another three decades before anyone followed in his footsteps.
Since Denzel Washington claimed his second Oscar and first for ‘Best Actor’ for Training Day in 2001, he’s been joined on the podium by Ray‘s Jamie Foxx, The Last King of Scotland‘s Forest Whitaker, and King Richard‘s Will Smith, although it wouldn’t be unfair to say the latter’s antics on the night overshadowed his victory.
Halle Berry has been open in voicing her frustrations that she remains the one and only Black actor to win ‘Best Actress’, even if there have been ten winners in the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ category. Washington and Mahershala Ali are the only two Black actors to have won more than one competitive Oscar for acting, even though it’s been more than 80 years since an African-American performer was first nominated for – and won – an Oscar.
That honour fell to Hattie McDaniel, who forever etched her name in the history books when her performance as Mammy in Gone with the Wind claimed victory in the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ race in 1940, one of eight competitive prizes to be bestowed upon the monumental historical epic that shattered box office records and evolved into a full-blown cultural sensation.
Because the ceremony was held during the segregation era and the hotel that hosted the Oscars that year maintained its policy of racial division, McDaniel was required to sit at a segregated table away from the biggest stars in Hollywood, many of whom she’d worked with on Gone with the Wind. It was an unsavoury sign of the times that even though she’d done something nobody else had ever done before, the actor wasn’t even allowed to sit among her peers, contemporaries, and co-stars.
Who is Hattie McDaniel?
Her momentous Oscar win for Gone with the Wind will always be the defining aspect of McDaniel’s legacy, but she was a prolific actor who appeared in upwards of 300 features, even if she was only credited in little more than 80 of them.
She was already accustomed to making history long before winning an Oscar after her stint as a radio and television personality saw her become the first Black woman to ever sing on the radio in the United States, and she used her platform as a trailblazing movie star to strengthen her activism and involvement in social and political causes.
An unfortunate downside of her pioneering achievement is that nobody knows where McDaniel’s Oscar is or what happened to it. She donated it to Howard University following her death at the age of 59 in October 1962, with rumours abounding that it was either stolen, misplaced, or simply lost to history.
