Who was the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’
In 1964, the legendary Sidney Poiter became the first Black man to win the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ for his role in Lilies of the Field. Five years earlier, he’d become the first Black actor to receive a ‘Best Actor’ nomination for his part in The Defiant Ones. His victory solidified his status as a crossover icon and helped break down barriers between races at a time when segregation was still in force in some parts of the United States.
The next African-American to be nominated in the same category was James Earl Jones in 1970, but a Black man wouldn’t win ‘Best Actor’ until Denzel Washington for Training Day in 2001. This is an incredible statistic, one that betrays how much of a racial divide there still is at the Oscars and in the wider Hollywood scene. But what about Black women? Have they fared any better? The answer is complicated.
In some respects, African-American women have fared better at the Oscars than their male counterparts. Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to receive an acting nomination, earning a nod for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ in 1940 for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. She not only secured the nomination but also won on her first attempt—a feat that occurred 19 years before Sidney Poitier’s first nomination and over 25 years before he claimed his own Oscar. In the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ category, Black women have seen some success, including the most recent winner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, for her role in The Holdovers. However, when it comes to the ‘Best Actress’ category, the story is starkly different.
A Black woman was nominated for a leading actor role before a Black man was. Dorothy Dandridge was recognised in 1954 for her performance in Carmen Jones, although she ended up losing to Grace Kelly. In 1972, history was made when two Black women both went up for the prize, Diana Ross for Lady Sings the Blues and Cicely Tyson for Sounder, but again, neither won. The first African-American to win ‘Best Actress’ would end up being Halle Berry for Monster’s Ball. That was in 2001, the same year Denzel Washington also scooped a little gold statuette.
Directed by Marc Forster, Monster’s Ball tells the story of a prison officer (Billy Bob Thornton) who begins a relationship with Leticia (Halle Berry), the recently widowed wife of a man he helped send to his death. The film is both profoundly romantic and heartbreakingly painful, a beautifully moving exploration of human connection. Leticia serves as the perfect lens through which to examine the devastating impact the justice system can have on families as the audience becomes deeply invested in her and her son’s (played by the late Coronji Calhoun) struggles.
61 years after the first African-American woman was nominated for an acting Oscar and 37 years after a Black man won the corresponding award, a woman of colour had finally been appointed the ‘Best Actress’ by the Academy. If that wasn’t shocking enough, Berry is still the only Black woman to have ever won this award. Only seven African-American women have been nominated since 2001, and none since 2020.
There can be no denying that great strides have been made in racial equality in the film industry, but this astounding Oscar record proves that there is still a lot of ground left to cover. There are hundreds of fantastic actors, male and female, of all races and ethnicities who are systematically locked out of winning major awards. As time moves forward, hopefully this trend will be reversed, but nothing will change if people don’t stop fighting it.
