Professor and vocalist Kishna Davis Fowler opens the celebration service with a medley of songs in honor of actress and singer-songwriter Hattie McDaniels on the Cramton Auditorium stage.
Advocates for the work of actress and singer-songwriter Hattie McDaniel made their way to Cramton Auditorium to witness the restoration of her Academy Award.
Decades ago, McDaniel’s Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Mammy in the 1939 film, “Gone With The Wind,” went missing and was not replaced until two weeks ago on Oct. 1. In tribute to her legacy and the refurbished award by the academy, a celebration event was held with members of the Howard community and her sorority sisters of today.
“[Hattie McDaniel] was the first African American to receive this honor,” Area 1 Coordinator for the northeastern region of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Incorporated, Dr. Dawn Sherman, said. “It’s always a time to honor and uplift those women who came before us to pave the way for those students here who want to follow in her footsteps.”
Sigma Gamma Rho members stand to be recognized and celebrated by audience attendees.
The evening opened with remarks from Phylicia Rashad, dean of Howard’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, and followed with a medley of songs and a reading of “Boulevard of Bold Dreams” by LaDarrion Williams performed by students from the Department of Theater Arts. The excerpt transported the audience back to 1940 with McDaniel reeling with the information of being told that she was not allowed to sit in the banquet hall of the Academy Awards because she was Black.
Even after receiving backlash on some of the roles she took symbolizing the “mammy” caricature, McDaniel wanted to accept the award because she believed that she took those jobs to make Hollywood recognize the work her grandmother and mother did for working white households.
McDaniel’s has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was the first Black Oscar winner to be on a postage stamp. Audience members like sophomore acting major Emil White were in admiration of these accolades.
“It’s a shame that I had to come here to learn so much about her,” White said. “I really only knew simply that she played controversial roles, but now I know that she did what she needed to do to inspire me. She gave Black children someone to look up to.”
A panel made up of Howard professors, filmmaker, actor and the great-grandnephew of McDaniel, Kevin John Goff, and a woman lavishing a feathery, green boa around her shoulders, calling inspiration from McDaniel’s style, gathered on Cramton’s stage to discuss the award winner further.
One panelist, associate professor of Africana studies and chair of the Department of Afro-African Studies at Howard, Dr. Greg Carr, discussed his views on the award itself’s initial purpose being for a non-Black audience.
“[We] are reinforcing shrines that do not belong to us,” Carr said. “We do not have an independent base to call our own. Hattie stood in the middle of Hollywood for the Black race and for the industry. [Today,] we utilize the momentum of memory to sneak Black people in.”
Before presenting a poem about the contrary acceptance of Black people in the film industry and beyond, Goff spoke of his great-aunt’s accomplishment with highlights of her gender in addition to her race.
“[Hattie’s award] gets young people to know her impact on the industry not only as a Black person but as a Black woman,” Goff said. He referenced the end of his poem to reemphasize Carr’s stance, “To be memorialized, Black accepted.”
The award was placed back behind glass in the lobby of Childer’s Hall in the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts.