At the 12th Academy Awards on February 29, 1940, Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind, becoming the first African American to be nominated for and to win an Oscar. Supporting winners at the time received a plaque rather than a statuette.

The ceremony was held at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, which did not admit Black patrons, and producer David O. Selznick had to call in a special favor for her to enter. McDaniel, 46, wearing a blue gown with gardenias in her hair, was not seated at the film's table with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable but at a small table against a far wall with her escort. She was the only Black woman in the room. Months earlier, Georgia's segregation laws had kept her and the film's other Black actors from attending its premiere in Atlanta.

Selznick had looked at McDaniel for the…