Mammy, cartoon or otherwise, was a character that had been a part of America’s collective imagination for a while. After appearing in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, mammy started to get around. Despite the fact that slaves were given very little to eat and were often worked into early graves, the notion of the large, middle-aged, dark-skinned Black woman who loved her owners more than life itself, became cherished. And why wouldn’t it? With no husband, children or family to ever speak of, this loyal, motherly, sexless husk of a human being posed little threat to white society. It was McDaniel’s portrayal of mammy that came to embody a character that still sets the standard for Black actresses today.
For McDaniel, the role turned out to be bittersweet. On the one hand, it earned her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress – the first for any Black actor – but on the other, she was heavily criticised for taking the role at all. The National Association for the Advancement for Coloured Peoples (NAACP) hated her lip-puckering, eye-rolling antics and accused her of degrading her race. In response, she explained that the role had given her the chance to improve working environments for other Black actors as well as herself. When it came down to it, she said: “I’d rather get paid $700 a week playing a maid than $7 working as one.”
In stark contrast, Dorothy Dandridge was everything McDaniel wasn’t: light-skinned, beautiful and petite, she was 5ft 4 inches worth of exoticised trouble. Any sexuality that had been removed from mammy at birth had seemingly been transplanted into Dandridge’s often hypersexualised frame.
As a kid, it was easy to spot the difference: mammy was just a funny Black woman who provided the light relief in a three-hour long film, but Dandridge was different. I could see that she was the kind of light-skinned lovely every young Black girl should aspire to be, but like most things to do with racism, there was a lot more to it. And it was down to me to discover it.