Let’s be clear about something. A black actress played a black woman in a movie. More specifically, in 1939 a black actress played– and note that word, played, pretended to be– a character in a movie set during the Civil War. Presumably, she did this of her own volition. And was paid.

After working as early as the 1910s as a band vocalist, Hattie McDaniel debuted as a maid in The Golden West (1932). Her maid-mammy characters became steadily more assertive, showing up first in Judge Priest (1934) and becoming pronounced in Alice Adams (1935). In this one, directed by George Stevens and aided and abetted by star Katharine Hepburn, she makes it clear she has little use for her employers’ pretentious status seeking. By The Mad Miss Manton (1938) she actually tells off her socialite employer Barbara Stanwyck and her snooty friends. This path extends into the greatest role of her career, Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). Here she is, in a number of ways, superior to most of the white folk surrounding her. From that point her roles unfortunately descended, with her characters becoming more and more menial. She played on the “Amos and Andy” and Eddie Cantor radio shows in the 1930s and 1940s; the title in her own radio show “Beulah” (1947-51), and the same part on TV (Beulah (1950)). Her part in Gone with the Wind (1939) won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the first African American actress to win an Academy Award. IMDB.com [my emphasis]

So now Hattie McDaniel, a free human agent who made decisions about what characters she wanted to play in movies, is … . Is what?

Let’s be clear about something. A black actress played a black woman in a movie. More specifically, in 1939 a black actress played– and note that word, played, pretended to be– a character in a movie set during the Civil War. Presumably, she did this of her own volition. And was paid.

Thelma McQueen attended public school in Augusta, Georgia and graduated from high school in Long Island, New York. She studied dance with Katherine Dunham, Geoffrey Holder, and Janet Collins. She danced with the Venezuela Jones Negro Youth Group. The “Butterfly” stage name, which does describe her constantly moving arms, actually derives from dancing the “Butterfly Ballet” in a 1935 production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Her stage debut was in “Brown Sugar,” directed by George Abbott for whom she did several other stage shows. In 1939 she appeared as the shop girls’ assistant Lulu in The Women (1939) and in her most famous role, the irresponsible, whiny Prissy of Gone with the Wind (1939) (“Oh, Miss Scarlett, I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout birthin’ babies”).

Two other notable appearances among her string of silly maid parts were in Flame of Barbary Coast (1945) and Mildred Pierce (1945). From 1947 to 1951, she was a regular on the radio show “Beulah” and then in the TV version 1950-52.

In 1980, a Greyhound Bus Lines guard mistook her for a pickpocket and handled her roughly, throwing her against a bench and cracking several of her ribs. She sued for assault, and after several years of litigation, she was awarded $60,000. She chose to live very frugally on the money and retired to a small town outside Augusta, Georgia, where she lived in anonymity in a modest one-bedroom cottage.

On the night of Dec. 22, 1995, a fire broke out in her home, and she was found by firefighters lying on the sidewalk outside with severe burns over 70 percent of her body. She said her clothes caught fire while she was trying to light a kerosene heater in her cottage, which was destroyed by the fire. She was taken to Augusta Regional Medical Center, where she died at age 84.

So now Thelma McQueen, a free human agent who made decisions about what characters she wanted to play in movies, who had the force of will at age 69 to not lay down and accept being treated wrongly is … . Is what?

There is no answer to that question.

McDaniel was born in Kansas in 1893. McQueen, in Georgia in 1911. IMDB has next to nothing on Oscar Polk who played Pork, but he was born in Arkansas in 1899. Not exactly regions of the country known for diversity and inclusion at the time. Wonder what personal sacrifices and struggles these individuals had to make along the way to the studio? What exercises of free agency?

Just to let you know, I got mine first thing this morning.