Howard University can’t find the Academy Award given to Hattie McDaniel, the first Black actress ever to win an Oscar in 1939 for her role in “Gone with the Wind.”
According to AOL Black Voices, the historically Black college has not been able to find the plaque for some time and has made a few claims about the missing award, including saying that it never had the Oscar or that someone stole it and it may be at an instructor’s home.
When she died of breast cancer in 1952, McDaniel left her Oscar to Howard’s drama department. One theory is that students stole the award in the 1960s, protesting the “subservient” roles that she played, Black Voices reported.
Another is that a thief snatched the Oscar, worth $550,000. Now, as Mo’Nique — who thanked Hattie McDaniel for “enduring all that she had to” in her Academy Award acceptance speech — gears up to star as the pioneering actress in a McDaniel biopic, the spotlight is on Howard to tell us where the Oscar is.
