Since football season ended, that big flat rectangular shaped piece of furniture called a television has been  silent and collecting dust recently in my living room.

   So instead of reading about it the next morning, I decided to see it first hand and turned on the TV and watched as much as I could stomach of the  2010 Academy Awards.

   The last time I sat and watched a significant amount of any of this, or any other awards program on TV, was back in 1986 when I witnessed  "The Color Purple," which had been nominated in 11 categories but failed to win even one. 

   That is another story for another day. 

   I sat and watched the recent show long enough to see comedienne/Actress Monique grab the best Supporting Actress Award for portraying that demon of a mother in the movie "Precious."   She stood in her blue dress, adorned in gardenias, and accepted the award. I was really pleased when she gave tribute to  Mrs. Hattie McDaniel, the first Black woman to capture the award in 1940 for her role in “Gone With the Wind.”

 I understand that certain fashion mavens poked fun at Monique’s choice of attire.  But it shows  the shallowness of these witches about the artist's intentions and Black history.

   Monique walked down a red carpet after exiting a limousine with her husband, the man who she has an open relationship with these days.

   Now that is a story for another time too!!

   She sat in a very prominent position in the big well-lit hall.

   Now, when Mrs. McDaniel arrived at the site of the program in 1940, she discovered that she could not sit with the white members of the cast of "Gone With the Wind." Instead, she and her entourage had to sit at a separate table in the back of the hall because of Jim Crow laws, which forbade the mixing of the races.

   According to the press that covered the event, McDaniel represented herself and Black folks well as she stood with "hair trimmed with gardenias, face alight, and dressed up to the queen's taste, and accepted the honor "

   MoNnique said that Mrs. McDaniel endured such insults so she did "not have to."  But what Mo’Nique did gives even more weight to her achievement. It shows that she deeply understands the importance of her history and the people who received the back hand of Jim Crow racism so she would not have to face such disrespect.

   While Mo’ Nique played an evil and abusive mother of the Black ghetto child, Precious, Hattie McDaniel, if you do not know, played a slave " Mammy" a servant and maid for the spoiled  and rotten white character Scarlet O'Hara,  played by Vivien Lee in the movie Gone With the Wind.  The movie depicted the 19th century Civil War era southern life and relationship between subservient Blacks slaves and their white masters.

   Most people back then, as they would surely today, would define the role as embarrassing, unreliable or laughable today.  But McDaniel's “Mammy" was a strong and wise Black woman despite her station in life and showed more common sense, reserve and wisdom than her white superiors, which provided some ironic dignity to the role and the actor.

   Most of the roles she secured on the stage and screen were this kind. There were very few roles as professionals or other acceptable-dignified types for Black men or women in Hollywood during the 1930s.

   But McDaniel said that she would rather "play a maid than be one."  But when work was slow, she had to acquire jobs cleaning up behind white people because she had no other opportunities.

   McDaniel was born in 1895, in Wichita, Kansas, to former slaves. She was the youngest of 13 children. Her father Henry McDaniel fought in the Civil War with the 122nd USCT and her mother, Susan Holbert, was a singer of religious music, In 1900, the family moved to Colorado, living first in Fort Collins and then in Denver, where Hattie grew up and graduated from Denver East High School. Her brother Sam McDaniel {1886-1962} played the butler in the 1948 Three Stooges short film Heavenly Daze. Another acting sibling of Hattie and Sam was actress Etta McDaniel.

   She was also a songwriter, a skill she honed while working with her father's minstrel show. After the death of her brother Otis in 1916, the troupe began to lose money, and it wasn't until 1920 that Hattie received another big opportunity. During 1920–25, she appeared with Professor George Morrison's Melony Hounds, a touring black ensemble, and in the mid-1920s she embarked on a radio career, singing with the Melony Hounds on station KOA in Denver. In 1927–1929 she also recorded many of her songs on Okeh Records[6] and Paramount Records in Chicago.

   When the stock market crashed in 1929, the only work McDaniel could find was as a washroom attendant and waitress at Club Madrid in Milwaukee. Despite the owner's reluctance to let her perform, McDaniel was eventually allowed to take the stage and became a regular.

   In 1931, McDaniel made her way to Los Angeles to join her brother Sam and sisters Etta and Orlena. When she could not get film work, she took jobs as a maid or cook. Sam was working on KNX radio program called The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour, and he was able to get his sister a spot. She appeared on radio as Hi-Hat Hattie, a bossy maid who often "forgets her place."  Despite the show's popularity, her salary was low and she continued work as a maid.

   Her first film appearance was in The Golden West (1932), as a maid; her second was in the highly successful Mae West film I'm No Angel (1933), as one of the plump black maids West camped it up with backstage. She received several other unaccredited film roles in the early 1930s, often singing in choruses.

   In 1934, she began to receive roles and screen credits such as the Little Colonel (1935), with Shirley Temple, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Lionel Barrymore.

   Judge Priest (1934), directed by John Ford and starring Will Rogers, was the first film in which she played a major role. She had a leading part in the film and demonstrated her singing talent, including a duet with Rogers. McDaniel and Rogers became friends during filming.

   McDaniel had prominent roles in 1935 with her performance as a slovenly maid in RKO Pictures' Alice Adams, and a comic part as Jean Harlow's maid/traveling companion in MGM's China Seas, the latter her first film with Clark Gable.

   She had a featured role as Queenie in Universal Pictures' 1936 version of Show Boat starring Irene Dunne, and sang a verse of Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man with Dunne, Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson, and the African-American chorus. Later in the film she and Robeson sang I Still Suits Me, a song written especially by Kern and Hammerstein for the film.

   After Show Boat she had major roles in MGM's Saratoga (1937), starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, The Shopworn Angel (1938) with Margaret Sullavan, and The Mad Miss Manton (1938), starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. She had a very minor role in the Carole Lombard/Frederic March vehicle Nothing Sacred (1937), in which she appeared as the wife of a shoeshine man (Tony Brown, Jr.) masquerading as a sultan.

   McDaniel had befriended several of Hollywood's most popular stars, including Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, with the last two of whom she would star in Gone with the Wind.

   It was around this time that she began to be criticized by members of the black community for roles she was choosing to take. The Little Colonel (1935) depicted black servants longing for a return to the Old South. Ironically, McDaniel's portrayal of Malena in RKO Pictures' Alice Adams angered white Southern audiences. She managed to steal several scenes away from the film's star, Katharine Hepburn. This was the type of role she became best known for, the sassy, independently minded, and opinionated.