Hattie McDaniel's funeral, on November 1,1952, was a genuine Hollywood spectacle. The hearse bearing her body snaked its way through the streets of Los Angeles, leading a line of limousines more than a mile long. Along the route, thousands stood and watched the procession pass. The Angelus Funeral Home needed two dozen of its largest vans to transport the tons of flowers sent by the likes of Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Shirley Temple, and Walt Disney. At the funeral, 5,000 mourners over flowed the church's sanctuary and spilled into the streets, blocking traffic for four blocks.
I her own humble way, McDaniel would have been pleased by the fuss. In an almost 45-year career that spanned vaudeville, radio, motion pictures, and television, she had created a lot of firsts, known the heights of success, and faced a full share of sorrow. "It was ironic that at her death, the love she had always wanted, and felt lacking in her life, came with such great force and intensity," wrote Carlton Jackson in his 1990 book Hattie, the only comprehensive biography written about the actress." It would have thrilled Hattie to see all the outpourings of affection for her." McDaniel's death marked the end of an era. She was the last of that breed of actress known as the "kitchen mammy." And no one played the part better.
She was born on June 10,1895, the thirteenth and youngest child of Henry and Susan McDaniel. Henry McDaniel had been born a slave on a plantation near Richmond,Virginia, where his mother was the plantation's cook and mammy. After being freed, he had continued to work there as a field hand. In 1875 he married a Nashville religious singer named Susan Holbert. Feeling life would be easier out West, the couple moved their growing family to Wichita,Kansas, where Hattie was born, and where Henry's talents as a Baptist preacher and banjo picker, and his wife's as a singer, made them minor celebrities in the black community. They moved on to Fort Collins,Colorado, and then, when Hattie was around five, to Denver, where working and living conditions were better.

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