American actress, singer and songwriter Hattie McDaniel was BOTD in 1893. Born in Wichita, Kansas, her parents were freed slaves and her father a veteran of the American Civil War. The youngest of 13 children, she was raised in Fort Collins and Denver in Colorado, where she and her siblings began appearing in minstrel acts. In the 1920s, she joined a Black touring ensemble, and became a radio singer, writing and recording songs for Paramount Records. In 1931, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting, supporting herself as a hotel maid and laundress. She appeared on a popular radio show as “Hi-Hat Hattie”, a sassy and insubordinate maid, a trope that was to follow her throughout her career. She made her screen appearance as a house slave in 1932’s The Golden West, and had a significant role opposite Mae West in I’m No Angel. Put under contract by Fox Film, she had a lead role in Judge Priest, though was mostly relegated to maid roles in Alice Adams with Katharine Hepburn, China Seas and Saratoga with Jean Harlow, Vivacious Lady with Ginger Rogers and The Mad Miss Manton with Barbara Stanwyck. She turned heads with a supporting role in the musical film Showboat, singing the popular standard Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man. She is best known for playing Mamie, the loyal house-slave in the 1939 Civil War epic Gone With the Wind. One of Hollywood’s greatest box-office successes, the role won her an Oscar for best supporting actress, making her the first African-American to win an Academy Award. The Oscar ceremony was hosted in a segregated hotel, requiring McDaniel to enter via a side door and not sit with her white cast mates. In her acceptance speech, she expressed hope that she would “always be a credit to my race”. The racial and political legacy of the film was more complex: many Black commentators objected to the film’s portrayal of slaves as submissive fools, and McDaniel was criticised for perpetuating a racist stereotype of Black women as smothering, self-sacrificial mother figures. Perhaps unsurprisingly, McDaniel spent the rest of her career playing servants, retiring from film in 1949 and performing in radio and television. Married and divorced four times, she identified as bisexual, and had a discreet relationship with journalist Ruby Goodwin. A satellite member of Hollywood lesbian group The Sewing Circle, she was also rumoured to have an affair with Tallulah Bankhead. She died in 1951, aged 59. Amid many posthumous tributes, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was featured on a US postage stamp. She was played by Queen Latifah in the 2020 TV series Hollywood, in which she is portrayed as an open lesbian who pursues an affair with Bankhead.