She was the first Black person ever to win an Oscar. Then her Oscar vanished, and nobody has found it since. Hattie McDaniel came to Los Angeles with a big voice and a gift for comedy. To get by, she worked as a maid. In 1939 she was cast as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. She wasn't allowed at its Atlanta premiere. The theater was whites-only. Clark Gable threatened to boycott, and McDaniel talked him into going anyway. On February 29, 1940, she went to the Academy Awards at the Ambassador Hotel's Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, nominated for Best Supporting Actress. The hotel had a strict no-Black policy. She was let in as a favor and seated at a small segregated table against the far wall, away from her co-stars. Then they read her name. She walked to the stage with gardenias in her hair and said she hoped to always be a credit to her race. She was in tears. When critics attacked her for playing maids, she answered: "Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one." She died of breast cancer on October 26, 1952. Her last wish was to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery. It refused. It was segregated. She left her award to Howard University, where it sat in a glass case. Then, sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, it was gone. No record of what happened to it. A rumor said protesters threw it into the Potomac. A law professor who investigated called that baseless. It has never turned up. In 2023, the Academy gave Howard a replacement, 83 years after she won. They kept her out of the premiere and out of the cemetery. They couldn't keep her out of history. Disclaimer: Supporting winners then got a plaque, not a statuette. Accounts vary on her exact words and when the award disappeared. Photos: Fred Parrish/Selznick International (Gone with the Wind, 1939, public domain); Los Angeles Times (1940, CC BY-SA 4.0); Tichnor Brothers (Cocoanut Grove postcard, public domain); ajay_suresh (Howard University, CC BY 4.0); via Wikimedia Commons