Whereabouts of The McDaniel Oscar
Today, a controversy exists over the whereabouts of the McDaniel Oscar. In his 1990 biography of McDaniel, Carlton Jackson stated that Howard University was not able to find the Oscar. According to Jackson, some Howard officials had speculated that it disappeared during the Civil Rights student protests of the 1960s. In 1992, Jet Magazine ran a story repeating that Howard University could not find it and allegations that it disappeared in the 1960s during the protests. In 1998, Howard University stated that it could find no written record of the Oscar having arrived at Howard. Subsequently, many other news organizations reported that the Oscar had been stolen or lost. In 2007, an article in the Huffington Post reported that it was rumored that the Oscar had been cast into the Potomac River by angry Civil Rights protesters in the 1960s. That story too was repeated in various media outlets. The assertion appeared in the Huffington Post again under the same byline in 2009.
In 2010, attention focused on the McDaniel Oscar again. In her acceptance speech, Best Supporting Actress winner Mo'Nique gave tribute to McDaniel. Mo'Nique wore a blue dress, with gardenias in her hair, in homage to McDaniel, who reportedly wore a similar outfit to the award ceremony in 1940. In 2010, The Washington Post, reported the results of an investigation by its reporter J. Freedom duLac. Again, sources told duLac that the award disappeared during the '60s racial unrest. So too Gregory was quoted as repeating that his source said that the Oscar was tossed in the Potomac River by angry protesters.
In November, 2011, Prof. W. B. Carter of the George Washington University Law School, published the results of her year and a half investigation of the Oscar's fate. Professor Carter rejected the claims that students took the Oscar (and threw it in the Potomac River) as wild speculation or pure fabrication that traded on long-perpetuated stereotypes about blacks who fought for their civil rights as being simply violent and nonsensical. She raised questions about the sourcing of the Huffington Post stories. Instead, she argued that the Oscar was likely returned to Howard University's Channing Pollack Theater Collection between the spring of 1971 and the summer of 1973 or possibly boxed up and stored in the Drama department in that same period. The reason for its removal, she argued, was not civil rights unrest but rather efforts to make room for a new generation in black theater emerging out of that era. If neither the Oscar, nor any written trail of its ultimate destiny, can be found at Howard today, she suggested, the reason may be inadequate storage and/or recordkeeping in a time of financial restraints and national turbulence. Those pressures and the passing of older generations, replaced those who knew the Oscar's history and fate with a younger generation. She suggested as well that a new generation of caretakers may have failed to realize that the small 5 1/2" x 6" McDaniel plaque that did not look like the traditional tall Oscar, was in fact an Oscar.
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