in a statement on Tuesday. CEO Bill Kramer and the director and president of the Academy Museum, Jacqueline Stewart, called McDaniel a “groundbreaking artist who changed the course of cinema and impacted generations of performers who followed her.”McDaniel was the first Black person to win an Oscar when she took home the Best Supporting Actress trophy in 1940. At the time, she received a plaque rather than a statuette, as was the Academy’s tradition from 1936 to 1942.
She bequeathed the award to Howard University upon her death in 1952, but it went missing sometime in the late ’60s.Hattie McDaniel poses with her Oscar plaque for Best Supporting Actress for"Gone With The Wind." The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences will replace her long-missing trophy with a new one.Howard University will celebrate McDaniel’s legacy with a ceremony called “Hattie’s Come Home” at the university’s Ira Aldridge Theater on Oct. 1, 2023.
During the 12th annual Academy Awards, McDaniels was segregated from her colleagues at the Ambassador Hotel. When she took the stage to accept the award, she told her peers, “I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you.”