Actress Hattie McDaniel won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as "Mammy" in "Gone with the Wind" on this day in history, February 29, 1940.
McDaniel, the first Black person to win an Academy Award, donated her Oscar to Howard University before her death. But the plaque mysteriously went missing, likely sometime around the 1960s or 1970s.
McDaniel was the first Black person to ever win an Oscar, which was displayed at Howard University until the late 1960s when it mysteriously disappeared.
Hattie McDaniel’s best supporting actress Oscar in 1939 for “Gone With the Wind” is one of the most important moments in Academy Award history. McDaniel was the first African American to win an Oscar, and it would be half a century before another Black woman again won an acting award.
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