Book Review: The Queen of Sugar Hill by ReShonda Tate. **Spoilers**
Hollywood clubs, sights, restaurants and digs. Learning how Hattie McDaniel made a name for herself in music, in vaudeville, and onstage in several cities. Her fortune of finding an agent when most white agents didn’t take Negro clients. Hatties’ role as Mammy often got more attention than some of the other players who were considered the stars, so she learned how to embrace it.
Hoping that she capitalized on her Oscar win, Hattie believed that her Oscar win was about to open a number of doors, and she didn’t want to block her blessings. Even the First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt had called Mr. Selznick, demanding that her maid Elizabeth McDuffie (who had no acting experience) be given the part.
Hattie was truly tired of the press linking everything she said or did to Mammy. She had enough and wanted to let these people know that she was Hattie McDaniel, not Mammy, and filmmakers remain dependent on typecasting colored performers. I was reading how in these times, Tyler Perry a mogul in the move and television industry, purchased and built his studio in the poorest black neighborhoods in Atlanta on the former land of a confederate army base plotting to keep blacks enslaved. Now it is employing as well as economically empowering everyone.
Hattie moved to the suburb of West Adams District that until a few years ago didn’t allow any colored folks to live there. To her it was a sign of success. Some of the most respected elite had settled in Sugar Hill. She had to fight restrictive covenants, and complaints about property values going down. This part of the story took me to America's History of Racial Housing Discrimination which Inspired the Amazon's Horror Series 'THEM' that tackles the racial housing covenants in Compton, California or the struggles of the Hansberry’s court trial of possession of property by misuse of the laws in Chicago. Her money was green but her skin wasn’t white. Hosting parties was her way to celebrate her continual survival of the lack of acting roles, playing bit parts, as superstitious servants, and housekeepers. Hattie McDaniel was in a high-profile case and gave a major shot at striking a blow against housing discrimination. Her win in the case of Sugar Hill opened avenues for blacks to move beyond the one part of Los Angeles designated for blacks, this garnered her the title of “Queen of Sugar Hill” because she saved their homes from restrictive covenants. In 1947 race-restrictive covenants became no more than worthless sheets of paper, unenforceable in any court in the land.
Parties gave Hattie joy. She had parties with Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby. Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Wonderful Smith, white actors, directors, reporter and Hollywood movers and shakers. When she expelled the reporter from her party, that was entertaining.
Hattie formed the Hollywood Victory committee. The goal was to keep morale up among colored military. She also won an appointment as a captain in the American Women’s Voluntary Services organization, and received citations from the Red Cross. Negro servicemen on layovers in Los Angeles stayed in Hattie’s home since the city still had very few hotels that welcomed colored patronage. Several of the black local actors served as a floating hotel for entertainers who came through town.
It is noted that the rewriting of history, the blatant lies that perpetuated stereotypes, the cutting of lines, deletion of scenes, and not able to get decent roles for black actors was a misfortune, but a sign of the times. Constantly battling the charges of 'Uncle Tom' and racial self-hatred on a daily basis. Film studios did very little to promote a new image of Negro womanhood. The studios version of the film “Song of the South,” an 'Uncle Remus' folktale remake told for generations within the Negro community. Disney made them into another extension of racist ideology. McDaniel was hoping to bring change from the inside. Fair-skinned black woman working in Hollywood, had the luxury of turning down roles, but the roles were of loose women, while the darker complexed black women were given servants, and mammy roles.
Hattie was tired of being assailed, and criticized for her portrayals and fought back. no matter how talented black actors were their options were few. No Negro woman had ever headlined her own radio show, but McDaniel was the first. Proctor & Gamble got the bright idea to get a Negro woman to play a Negro woman instead of a white man. Hattie began making demands. A return to what she loved was exactly what she needed. Procter & Gamble agreed to all of Hattie’s demands, but they’d also given her the final say over scripts and allowed her to hire her own staff, and was making the steadiest salary she had ever earned.
Lena Horne was among those high-profile celebrities who affiliated themselves with Paul Robeson, who everybody knew had communist ties, affecting her career. Studios also linked civil rights activism with communism. Lorraine Hansberry She took a job as an assistant at Freedom, the Harlem-based leftist newspaper run by Paul Robeson, and immediately thrust into the city’s political ferment. The vice-president of the New York chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., buckling under anti-Communist pressure, shouted down Robeson during a panel on helping Black people find jobs in radio and television, according to an article in The New York Times, dated January 17, 2022 - “The Many Visions of Lorraine Hansberry” by Blair McClendon.
It was a revelation how the author intertwined Dorothy Dandridge’s personal life into the storyline, and how she was not fully accepted in either world, colored or white. She was too light to satisfy Negroes, not light enough to secure the screen work, the roles, available to a white woman.
Hattie McDaniel never had a problem getting a man, It was keeping them that seemed to be the issue. Married four times. McDaniel counter-filed for divorce from her third husband. Depression had set up residency after each marriage, with her thoughts of all her lost loves, tragedies, and failures. Eventually the divorce, and the house upkeep was too much to handle. Sugar Hill is where famous motion picture figures opened the way for business and professional families to live in fine mansions, and with success comes much scrutinization. With every adversity in her life, she didn’t let it define her.
But such was the tragic life of Hattie McDaniel where breast cancer took up residence in her body. She’d been in more than seventy films and was destitute. The first Negro woman, to win an Academy Award, to stay at the Motion Picture Country Home Hospital, but denied burial at the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery.
The writing was well done and the fictional accounts felt very possible, however I am more intrigued to do further reading about the life of Hattie McDaniel. This novel is packed with historical facts, people, places and things. I would have read the book faster, but I constantly stopped to look up the actors, actresses, places, etc to give me a more visual reference. This is an extraordinary read and I hope to read more historical fiction from ReShonda Tate in the future.
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| Hattie McDaniels' House on Sugar Hill West Adams District, Los Angeles |
ReShonda Tate is a national bestselling author of more than 53 books, ReShonda Tate has the credentials, and the passion, to bring stories to life.
ReShonda writes both adult and teen fiction, as well as nonfiction. Her sophomore novel, Let the Church Say Amen, was made into a film directed by actress Regina King, and produced by TD Jakes and Queen Latifah.ReShonda made her on-screen movie debut in the film, which was one of BET’s highest-rated programs. Her book, The Secret She Kept, was also made into a movie and aired on TV One. ReShonda made a cameo in that movie as well.
A highly sought-after motivational speaker and award-winning poet, ReShonda is the recipient of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature for her book Say Amen, Again and was also nominated for her books Mama’s Boy and The Secret She Kept. She has received a plethora of distinguished awards and honors for her journalism, fiction, and poetry writing skills, including an induction into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame and a Texas Top Author honor. Considered one of the top African-American authors in the country, her books remain a staple on Bestseller’s lists and have been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, Jet, People, Essence, and Ebony Magazines.
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