Hattie McDaniel Faced Oscar Segregation

The first Black person to win an Academy Award was American actress Hattie McDaniel, who received Best Supporting Actress in 1940 for Gone with the Wind. Segregation had already barred her from the film's Atlanta premiere, and producer David O. Selznick had to petition the segregated Ambassador Hotel merely to admit her to the Oscars, where she sat at a separate table away from her white costars. When McDaniel died from breast cancer in 1952, her will requested burial at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. The cemetery rejected her final wish because of its whites-only policy, so she was buried at nearby Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery instead.

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