At the Convention Center during the Essence Festival of Culture, three authors divulged details on unsung icons who keep them inspired. For the panel She Did That!: Celebrating HerStory, writers ReShonda Tate, Sadeqa Johnson, and Victoria Christopher Murray spoke about the wit and ingenuity of core historical figures and others. Moderator Morgan Menzies who is a fellow book lover offered compelling talking points that made the conversation feel intentional.
Hattie McDaniel is one icon who was discussed. Tate started off the panel by sharing insights on the origins of her book The Queen of Sugar Hill: A Novel of Hattie McDaniel. The author declared that McDaniel is somewhat of an unsung hero. Her grandmother was a fan of Gone With The Wind–she felt reflected in the film since she was a maid. “This was a woman to be reckoned with, the more I researched I was dumbfounded at all that we did not know.”
Tate also shared that though McDaniel was nominated for and won an Academy Award, she still had to sit in the back of the ceremony. The actress was the first African American woman to win an Oscar.
“The House of Eve came to me because I was thinking about stories that my grandmother told me,” Johnson said fondly. She went on to describe how her grandmother was considered the Black sheep of the family due to having Sadeqa’s mother at a young age in the 1950s. A family secret kept nudging her in the direction that eventually led to her book. “I started thinking about women and secrets and reproductive issues.”
Johnson adds that she pondered what types of options her grandmother had when she found herself pregnant in the 1950s. This thought led her to the idea of “maternity homes,” which was a topic she began to explore further because it was intrinsically tied to women’s history in America. These homes were often spaces where women…
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