Hattie McDaniel-A Real Woman Who Didn't Need the E.R.A.

On February 29, 1940, Hattie McDaniel made history when she became the first
Black person to win an Academy Award, for her role as Mammy in Gone With
the Wind. As she stood in front of her white peers at the Cocoanut Grove, she
was the picture of pride and joy. “I sincerely hope that I shall always be a
credit to my race and the motion picture industry,” she said, crying. “My heart is too full to tell you how I feel.”
Hattie McDaniel was pursued relentlessly by a white black man named Walter Francis White-at one point head of the NAACP. Walter White took offense to the roles Hattie McDaniel chose and perfected so he targeted the actress for destruction of her career. White was married to an African-American woman and had two children which didn't stop him from having a long-term affair with a white woman whom he eventually married.
But in 1945, white homeowners in the area of Sugar Hill, the black Beverly Hills where Hattie McDaniel and many successful black people lived, began an attempt to push Black residents out of their homes, claiming that restrictive covenants barred them from the neighborhood. McDaniel took the lead in fighting the racist attack, organizing neighbors like Louise Beavers and Ethel Waters, and hosting meetings in her home. On December 5, 1945, McDaniel and a group of over 200 supporters were in the courtroom when legendary lawyer Loren Miller argued successfully that racially restrictive deeds and covenants were unconstitutional, thus, according
to Watts, “opening the door for the end of such residential segregation throughout the United States.” The case would eventually land in the United States Supreme Court which sided with the McDaniel residents