The Oscars In Black And White - African American actors and the Academy Awards

Ebony, April, 2000 by Aldore Collier

Black have faced formidable barriers in winning top film prize

IT began quietly in 1927. The first winners didn't sit on pins and needles because they knew in advance that they had won, and the first losers went home with honorable mention citations. But it didn't take long for the Academy Awards ceremony to become the premier award ceremony in the world and to become tainted by America's No. 1 problem--race.

The most obvious indication of this is that the Academy has repeatedly overlooked sensational, award-winning performances by Blacks. In the 73 years since the first Oscar was awarded, 144 Whites have been cited for the top acting award--best actor and best actress. In all that time, only 13 Blacks, compared to more than 300 Whites, have been nominated for the top award, and only one--Sidney Poitier--has actually won the top award. Three actors, Poitier, Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington, have been nominated twice for the best actor award. Washington, also nominated for Malcolm X, is the only Black actor nominated four times for best actor or best supporting actor.

The first Black performer to win the coveted Oscar statuette was Hattie McDaniel, who played a "mammy" in Gone With The Wind, and who received the best supporting actress award in 1939, beating her co-star Olivia de Havilland. The film, which has been criticized for whitewashing slavery and racism, raised the ire of the NAACP at the time it was being shot. Certain concessions reportedly were made to appease the civil rights organization, such as taking the N-word out of the dialogue. When the film premiered in Atlanta, not a single Black cast member was invited to the three days of festivities.

The Academy Award ceremony was held in those days at Los Angeles hotels, and when Oscar-winner H attic McDaniel and her escort arrived, they were shown to a special table for two in the rear of the hotel's Coconut Grove.

Dorothy Dandridge was the first Black performer to be nominated in the best actress category for her performance in Carmen Jones. She lost in 1954 to Grace Kelly. Even though Dandridge's performance was much-her-alded by critics, she was never given much chance of winning the Oscar because of her race. Some felt that her nomination was tantamount to victory.

Sidney Poitier won in 1963 for his performance in Lilies of the Field. The citation came in the middle of the Black Revolution and in the same year as the March on Washington, and certain people said the Poitier victory was a response not only to an exceptional performance by a world-class actor but also to the increasing weight of African-Americans in the world.

James Earl Jones took Jack Johnson and the award-winning Broadway hit The Great White Hope to the big screen and was nominated in 1970. But he lost to the man who made all the acting headlines, George C. Scott, who had said he would not accept an award even if he won. And he kept his word. The producers accepted for him.

One of the most unusual Oscar controversies erupted in 1972 when, for the first--and last--time two Black actresses were nominated for Academy Awards in the top category--Diana Ross for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues, and Cicely Tyson for her portrayal of a sharecropper's wife in Sounder. Some Hollywood insiders said the two actresses cancelled each other out, thereby allowing the award to go to Liza Minnelli, who was already the front-runner. Historically, the only times performers were ever thought to cancel each other out have been when both appeared in the same movie.

Sandra Evers-Manly, former president of the Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP and current president of the Black Hollywood Education and Resource Center, says overlooking Tyson was the biggest oversight in Oscar history. "That was the biggest. She gave the most outstanding performance that year," she says. "It was dramatic and emotional and I thought she was so deserving of the award. I think they gave it to Liza Minnelli [for Cabaret] because of her mother, Judy Garland, not because of her performance. They never gave Judy her dues. That year there was all kinds of talk about Judy Garland."

Many felt that an even more gargantuan oversight occurred in 1989 when Morgan Freeman failed to nab an Oscar for his role in Driving Miss Daisy. The film was named best picture and its female lead, veteran stage and film actress Jessica Tandy, picked up a best actress nod. But Freeman, who had a bigger role in the film, lost to Daniel Day-Lewis, who played a quadriplegic in the Irish film My Left Foot.

Freeman also was nominated for his understated but movingly eloquent performance in The Shawshank Redemption in 1994, but lost to Tom Hanks for Forrest Gump. Critics like Roger Ebert hailed Wesley Snipes' performance in the hit film New Jack City, but it, too, was ignored by the Academy.

Other overlooked performances, constantly cited by critics and moviegoers, especially in Black America, are Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction and A Time to Kill; Debbi Morgan for Eve's Bayou, and the creative talents of directors Spike Lee, John Singleton (the only Black director ever nominated for the top award) and Kasi Lemmons.