BONUS AWC: It’s not a leap year, but this series leaves no date behind in its quest to find an anniversary worth celebrating in every spot on the calendar. While February 29 remains in hiding for another year, we’ll take a moment to celebrate an event that happened on the rarest date of all.

For Hattie McDaniel, plenty of moments surrounding her performance in “Gone with the Wind” were not worth celebrating. When the movie debuted in Atlanta in December 1939, she – along with all the film’s black actors – were barred from the event due to Georgia’s segregation laws. Even on the night when she attended the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, she had to sit at a separate table from the rest of the cast and crew. But despite all that, she took home an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her Mammy role, making her the first black Oscar recipient in Academy Awards history. It happened 75 years ago (more or less) on February 29, 1940.

McDaniel’s achievement came on a banner night for “Gone with the Wind,” which took home 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. While a triumph of production, the movie is not the best vehicle for racial progress. It celebrates the antebellum South, with a black housemaid whose name has become shorthand for a brand of female racial stereotype. The Mammy performance is hard for me to watch today…but it’s also easy to see how it might have seemed progressive in 1939 for audiences to watch McDaniel's character deliver sassy tough love to a spoiled white debutante. For her part, McDaniel – who had been a washroom attendant and waitress after the stock market crash of 1929 – seemed unapologetic about taking on roles like Mammy, which were the only acting jobs she could get. She supposedly responded to criticism from liberal groups by saying "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.”

Upon accepting her Oscar, McDaniel called it one of the happiest moments of her life in a gracious speech, during which she said “I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry.” She was both. In her Los Angeles neighborhood, she helped organize black homeowners who were sued by their neighbors in an attempt to keep the neighborhood white. (A judge threw out the case, allowing McDaniel and the other families to keep their homes.) She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, recognizing her contributions to both radio and movies. She died in 1952 from breast cancer, at just 57. The whereabouts of her Oscar are unknown.

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