Howard University administration including new president, Dr. Ben Vinson III, was among the stars Sunday, Oct. 1 during the “Hattie’s Come Home” Ceremony in Ira Aldridge Theater. 

Presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the ceremony honored Hattie McDaniel’s replacement Best Supporting Actress Academy Award® returning to Howard University after mysteriously missing from the theater arts department in the 1960s. Despite it being missing for almost 50 years, the Academy vowed to replace the Oscar.

The outgoing dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, Phylicia Rashad placed the award on its shrine on the main floor of the building last week.

“It was her intention that her Oscar should be here. And here it comes again. That's a power of intention,” said Rashad. 

McDaniel won “Best Supporting Actress” for her role as ‘Mammy’ in the film “Gone With the Wind” in 1940, making history as the first Black woman to be nominated for and to receive an Oscar. 

When she died of breast cancer in 1952, her estate donated the Oscar to Howard University. 

The plaque was placed in a glass casing in the university's theater arts department. Its trajectory after that is widely unknown. 

Georgetown University Professor W. Burlette Carter took a deep dive into the case in 2018, finding the Oscar did not come to Howard directly from McDaniel’s estate. It was instead donated by Leigh Whipper, an acclaimed actor and changemaker in Hollywood who also attended Howard. 

Carter highlights other theories of how the mysterious disappearance happened, proposing that unrest among students in the 1960s and turnover rates in the drama department could be attributed to the missing artifact. Carter’s research relies heavily on student accounts as the University has minimal records of the plaque’s existence.   

The 60-page essay concludes with a more extensive statement about the cultural significance of such artifacts and the shortcomings of black colleges.

“It calls upon us to inquire whether the new cultural trustees of today who have possession of these items appreciate their worth, whether or not they are acting accordingly, and whether or not these cultural trustees have sufficient resources to do the job that we expect of them,” Carter wrote.

Jacqueline Stewart, Director and President of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Executive Vice President of Oscars Strategy Teni Melidonian, Greg Carr, Ph.D., Howard University Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies and  Kevin John Goff, filmmaker, actor, and Hattie McDaniel’s great-grandnephew were in attendance.