The Search for a Missing Oscar

Professor W. Burlette Carter spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about her yearlong research into the missing Oscar of Hattie McDaniel, the first black person to ever win an Academy Award. Professor Carter discovered that the Oscar was gifted to Howard University, residing there until 1972 before disappearing from a glass display case. The finding refuted the theory that the trophy was tossed in the Potomac River by "angry protesting students" after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. "It's a sad story," says Professor Carter, "but this Oscar represents a triumph for blacks—because we can look back and see that things really are so much better now."