LISTEN · EPISODE 6
Hattie McDaniel: Not Your Mammy
"I have never apologized for the roles I play." Hattie McDaniel wrote that in 1947, seven years after she became the first Black person to win an Academy Award. By then, she'd spent years defending the part that made her famous, and the name of that character had followed her off the screen: Mammy.
Before the label, she was a performer
Hattie was born in Kansas to parents who had both been enslaved, and she grew up in Denver surrounded by music. She joked that her mother used to pay her a nickel to stop singing. She left school to join her family's traveling show, toured the vaudeville circuit, sang on Denver radio, and recorded blues songs in the 1920s. When the Depression left her broke in Milwaukee in 1930, she took a job as a restroom attendant. One night she asked the band for "St. Louis Blues" and never went back to that job. She wasn't discovered. She'd been ready for years.
How an actress became "Mammy"
Hollywood kept casting Hattie as maids, and she found ways to make those small parts memorable. Then came Gone with the Wind. Studio publicity billed her as Hattie "Mammy" McDaniel and even claimed her grandmother would have been proud to see her become "the servant of 'quality folks.'" Audiences were encouraged to believe they knew Hattie because they knew her character.
Criticized from both sides
Black newspapers praised her performance while condemning the film as propaganda. The NAACP's Walter White accused actors like her of selfishness. Her answer is still quoted today: "I can be a maid for $7 a week, or I can play a maid for $700." When studios cut the stereotyped roles, they didn't replace them with better ones. Black actors simply lost work.
An Oscar at a separate table
Hattie wasn't allowed at the film's Atlanta premiere. At the 1940 Oscars, held in a whites-only hotel, she needed a special exception to attend, and after accepting her award she returned to a separate table in the far corner of the room. The Oscar didn't change what Hollywood offered her. She kept getting maid roles, including in Disney's Song of the South.
The fight most people don't know about
Offscreen, Hattie and her Black neighbors in Los Angeles's Sugar Hill went to court when white property owners tried to force them out of their homes, and in 1945 they won. She also organized performances for Black troops during World War II. She left her Oscar to Howard University so Black students could see it. It disappeared by the late 1960s, and in 2023 the Academy gave Howard a replacement.
Who she was
The singer. The songwriter. The comedian. The actress. An honest account of Hattie McDaniel has to hold the achievement and the restriction together, and remember the woman the label was never big enough to contain.
Sources behind the episode
Read or download the Episode 6 source list (PDF).