Notable born on this day in History —> Born today in 1911 Butterfly McQueen, American actress and dancer.
You may remember McQueen as the slave “Prissy” in the movie Gone with the Wind, famous for saying “I don’t know nothing about birthing babies.” She couldn’t even attend the film’s premiere in Atlanta in 1939 because the theater was segregated.
McQueen never married or had children.
In July 1983, a jury awarded McQueen $60,000 in a judgment stemming from a lawsuit she filed against two bus terminal security guards. McQueen sued for harassment after she claimed the security guards accused her of being a pickpocket and a vagrant while she was at a bus terminal in April 1979.
McQueen died at age 84 on December 22, 1995, at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, from burns sustained when a kerosene heater she attempted to light malfunctioned and burst into flames.McQueen donated her body to medical science and remembered the Freedom From Religion Foundation in her will.
“As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.”
“They say the streets are going to be beautiful in Heaven. Well, I’m trying to make the streets beautiful here … When it’s clean and beautiful, I think America is heaven. And some people are hell.”
~ Butterfly McQueen
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