She made Hollywood history as the first African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in ‘Gone With the Wind.’ As Mammy she was a genius of common sense, providing the film with its voice of reason. ‘She’s one person whose respect I’d like to have,’ muses Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler. In 1945 she helped organize a class-action lawsuit against housing discrimination in her Los Angeles neighborhood; the case went to the U. S. Supreme Court, and race-based restrictions on owning property were ruled unconstitutional. She was the first black woman to sing on American radio, and the first to star in her own radio and television series, ‘Beulah.’ Racism literally dogged her to the grave. McDaniel’s dying wish, to be buried at Hollywood Memorial Park (later named Hollywood Forever Cemetery), was denied because at the time that cemetery did not permit burials of Black Americans. In 1999, this memorial cenotaph was finally placed there by McDaniel’s relatives.
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