Notable African American Firsts In Art Awards
Hattie McDaniel, 1st African-American To Win An Academy Award
After the release of the epic war romance film “Gone With the Wind” in 1939, Hattie McDaniel — the daughter of two former slaves — was delighted with the reaction to her role as the enslaved housemaid for the spoiled heroine of the story. The Los Angeles Times even praised her work as “worthy of Academy supporting awards.”
McDaniel clipped out the story and presented it to the movie’s producer, David O. Selznick, who took the hint and submitted the 44-year-old McDaniel for a nomination as Best Supporting Actress — along with her co-star, Olivia de Havilland.
McDaniel with Olliva de Havilland and Vivien Leigh in "Gone With the Wind." Source: MGM Pictures
“Gone With the Wind” would set a record with 13 Oscar nominations for the 12th Academy Awards, which would be presented at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel on Feb. 29, 1940. Which was a segregated venue.
Selznick had to call in a favor to allow McDaniel, her escort for the night and her white agent to sit at a small table up against a far wall of the club — far away from the front and from the ornate table where Selznick sat with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.
McDaniel won and was presented with the embossed plaque that was given to supporting actor winners at the time. “I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything I may be able to do in the future,” she said. “I sincerely hope that I shall always be a credit to my race and the motion picture industry.”
Source: MGM Pictures
First African-American to Win A Tony Award
Juanita Hall
Source: 20th Century Fox
Her role as Bloody Mary in the Broadway production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” earned Hall a Tony Award in 1950. Eight years later, she’d reprise the role in the movie adaptation. Hall also played Madame Liang in another Rodgers and Hammerstein production, “Flower Drum Song.”
First African-American to Win A Pulitzer Prize
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks on the right. Source: The Pulitzer Prizes
Brooks’ second book of poetry, “Annie Allen,” chronicled the life of a young Black girl growing up on the South Side of Chicago. “Though this volume weighs little in the hand, it weighs much in the heart,” wrote poet and chess master Alfred Kreymborg, who was a member of the poetry jury for the 1950 Pulitzer Prize.
First African American To Win A National Book Award
Ralph Ellison
Source: National Archives
Ellison studied music at the Tuskegee Institute but, while visiting New York City in 1936, met Langston Hughes and Richard Wright and fell in love with the idea of writing fiction. His first novel, “Invisible Man,” about social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans, was published in 1952 and the only one published before his death.
First African-American To Win A Grammy Award
Ella Fitzgerald
Verve Records
Known as the “First Lady of Song,” Fitzgerald won two of the 28 awards given out for best jazz and female vocal performances at the first Grammy Awards ceremony in May 1959. She would go on to win 13 Grammys — including a lifetime achievement award in 1967 — Kennedy Center honors in 1979 and Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992.
First African-American To Win A Grammy Award
Source: Legacy.com
On the same 1959 night Fitzgerald won two of the first Grammy Awards, William “Count” Basie also took home two Grammys for his album “Basie”: Best Jazz Performance by a Group and Best Performance by a Dance Band. He’d go on to win seven more Grammys between 1960 and his death in 1984 at age 79.
First African-American To Win An Emmy Award
Harry Belafonte
Source: RCA Victor
“The King of Calypso” won an Emmy for Best Variety Special in 1960 for “Tonight with Harry Belafonte.” He had won a Tony Award in 1954, won Grammy Awards in 1960 and 1965. For his humanitarian work, he was given Kennedy Center honors in 1989, the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and an honorary Oscar in 2013.
First African-American To Win A Golden Globe
Sidney Polter
Source: MGM Pictures
After being nominated for Golden Globes for “Porgy and Bess” in 1959 and “Raisin in the Sun” in 1962, Poitier won in 1964 for “Lillies of the Field,” in which he played a handyman who builds a chapel for a group of German nuns. He would also win an Oscar for that role, another Golden Globe in 1968 and an honorary Oscar in 2001.
First African-American To Win A Pulitzer Prize For Drama
Charles Gordone
Source: UCLA Library
Gordone worked as an actor, director and playwright and became known for his efforts to embrace racial unity. From 1961 to 1966, he appeared in the off-Broadway production “The Blacks.” His play, “No Place to Be Somebody,” won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1970 and was also the first off-Broadway play to win that award.
First African-American To Win A Clio Award
Shirley Riley-Davis
Source: Curvyswagger.com
Remember the old AT&T commercial that went: “Long distance is the next best thing to being there”? That was dreamed up by advertising writer Riley-Davis, who, in 1972, won the first of three national Clio award for her ads for AT&T. She’d also work on campaigns for Old Spice, Kraft Foods, Kellogg’s, Allstate insurance and McDonald’s
First African-American To Win Album Of The Year
Stevie Wonder
Source: Tamla Records
Wonder won five Grammy Awards in 1973, including Album of the Year for “Innervisions” and other awards for his songs “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and “Superstition.” He would win Album of the Year for his next two album releases as well, “Fulfillingness’ First Finale” in 1974 and “Songs in the Key of Life” in 1976.
First African-American To WIn A Nobel Prize For Literature
Toni Morrison
Source: Connecticut Forum
The author of “Song of Solomon,” “Jazz” and other novels of Black American life, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for “Beloved.” According to the academy, the Princeton creative writing professor, “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.
First African-American To Win An EGOT
Whoopi Goldberg
From: Wikimedia Commons
While other Black entertainers have won Emmys, Grammys, Oscars and Tony Awards, Goldberg’s 2002 two-fer wins of a Tony as producer as the musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and an Emmy for a documentary about Hattie McDaniel made her the first African American to collect all four. John Legend and Jennifer Hudson have done it since.