The Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress awards were first established in 1936.
It took over five decades for the first black performer to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Louis Gosseett Jr. for An Officer and a Gentleman, in 1982.
It took 3 years for the first black woman–Hattie McDaniel for Gone With the Wind, in 1939, to be nominated for and win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
However, it took no less than 33 years for a black performer–Rupert Crosse for The Reivers, in 1969–to receive a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.
In the Academy’s long history, only 5 black performers–and 6 performances– have won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar (amounting to less than 5 percent).
Mahershala Ali is the only black actor to win two Supporting Actor Oscars, for Moonlight in 2016 and for Green Book in 2018.
Black Supporting Actor Winners:
1982: Louis Gossett Jr. An Officer and a Gentleman
1989: Denzel Washington, Glory
1996: Cuba Gooding Jr, Jerry Maguire
2004: Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby
2016: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
2018: Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Black Supporting Actors Nominees:
1969: Rupert Crosse, The Reivers
1981: Howard E. Rollins, Jr., Ragtime
1984: Adolphe Caesar, A Soldier’s Story
1987: Morgan Freeman, Street Smart
1992: Jaye Davidson, The Crying Game
1994: Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction
1999: Michael Clarke Duncan, The Green Mile
2003: Djimon Hounsou, In America
2004: Jamie Foxx, Collateral
2006: Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
2006: Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
