@helenS I remember that movie was offered on an airplane flight I took a few years ago. I watched the beginning for the heck of it, and it showed all these happy slaves, singing and dancing, truly a movie saturated with racism.
@ElwoodBlues And what was happening in rl at the time was no better. Hattie McDaniel, nominated and ending up winning Best Supporting actress, was prohibited from attending the movie’s premiere, as were the other black actors—the Atlanta theater had a whites only policy.
Clark Gable, to his credit, had befriended her and took the stand that he wouldn’t attend, either. People behind the scenes prevailed upon Ms. McDaniel to encourage him to attend anyway, successfully guilting her into persuading him. When she accepted her award, they had to go get her from a table near the kitchen—again, the black actors had not been allowed to sit with their co-stars.
A postscript is that Hattie McDaniel’s last wish was to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery when she died. Alas, it went unfulfilled—when she passed in 1952, the cemetery was still "whites only".
@wonkywinky African-Americans have protested against it from the start in 1939, even if white America didn’t want to hear it. And the battle is still going on. To me it's essentially a documentation of racial stereotypes of the time when the movie was made. My apologies to all people on SW who happen to be dark-skinned, but I think I should illustrate my point with a picture from the movie:
