With Berry's nomination receiving attention in the Hollywood circles, and the whispers of her possibly taking the golden man home, it was only fitting that the Academy honor her with the Oscar. As is the case with many exceptional African-American actresses, her win was long overdue.

There have been only fourteen black actresses nominated for either Best Actresses or Best Supporting Actress in the entire 74-year history of the Academy Awards. And of those fourteen, only two have ever took a statuette home: Whoopi Goldberg in 1990 for her supporting role in Ghost and the late Hattie McDaniel in 1939 for the same category in Gone With The Wind.

Nonetheless, with her win on Oscar night, Halle Berry is in the forefront of a string of intelligent, versatile African-American actresses gracing the silver screen.

Her range of acting talent is diverse and includes playing a sympathetic crack addict in 1995's Losing Isaiah to playing James Bond's love interest in the latest Bond movie, Die Another Day due for release in November.

She auditions for and usually gets movie roles that white actresses would normally receive. Her winning the Best Actress honors was the crème de la crème for her years of picking acting roles to display her range rather than just playing the same character in every movie, or the token black character.

The Academy was right on the money when it broke tradition to recognize Berry, according her the same honor accorded to the likes of Sissy Spacek, Meryl Streep or even a Kate Winslet.

Nevertheless, Hollywood is like any other industry in the nation, slow in rectifying the slights given to African-American women. The new generation of actresses: Angela Basset, Whoopi Goldberg, Vivica Fox, Nia Long, Loretta Devine, etc. All are the beneficiaries of the limited choices that earlier actresses like Hattie McDaniel, Dorothy Dandridge, Beah Richards, and Ethel Waters had to struggle against.

Early Hollywood executives never could envision black actresses playing anything but mammies, maids, hookers or church hollering fat women in such movies as 1939's Gone With the Wind; Pinky (1949) and Imitation of Life (1959).

Moreover, in the movies just mentioned, the three black actresses in them, Hattie McDaniel, Ethel Waters and Juanita More, were nominated for maid roles. These ladies did like many black actresses; they brought whatever characterization they could to such limiting and demeaning roles.

They could not afford the luxury of waiting for the right part like their white female counterparts, such as Bette Davis or Katherine Hepburn. There were only a few exceptions such as the late Dorothy Dandridge.

In comparing Berry's and McDaniel's Oscar winning roles, McDaniel's for Best Supporting Actress and Berry's for Best Actress, one can see the sharp demarcation between the two. Whereas, McDaniel's Mammy was fat, subservient and unsexy to the extreme, especially in comparison to co-star, Olivia De Haviland.

However, Berry's Oscar winning character was slim, attractive, possessing a Southern sexiness that captured an inner vulnerability. In Monster's Ball, she has an interracial sexual encounter in one scene with co-star, Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade) that would make any man take notice whatever his persuasion.

It is a known fact that Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors in Gone With The Wind could not attend the star-studded premiere of that movie in Atlanta in 1939 due to the rigid segregation in the South.

Sadly, McDaniel did not have a love interest of any kind in her movies. On the other hand, Halle Berry's movie is about the exploration of the growing love between her black waitress character and Thornton's white cop character. Unlike Hattie, Halle has the greater opportunity to flesh out her characters and make them more real to the moviegoer.

Of course, McDaniel's acting did not represent what she really believed black women were actually like; her characters were nothing more than the mirror of white America's false assumptions of what black women should be like. She would often tell people that she tried to bring wit to her maid/mammy roles and was not into dumbing them down even for movie executives.

Maybe with Halle Berry's win on Oscar night, there will be a new appreciation and acceptance of African-American women in even more challenging, diverse roles.

Maybe the doors for other black women who want to take on mature characters will have a better opportunity to showcase that talent in themselves. It could not hurt in the short term. However, Hollywood is a capricious business…one minute you are hot, the next you are not.

In any case, I would like to say to Halle Berry, "Congratulations" and to all the other fine, talented African-American women in front of the camera and behind, "keep up the good work because you've come a long way, baby."

Mark A. Rawls

Mark A. Rawls is Asst. Vice-Pres./Dir. Of Ins. Services of Golden Circle Life Insurance Company of Brownsville, Tennessee, which is currently ranked as the 8th largest black-owned life insurance company in America (Black Enterprise Magazine June 2001 issue)