Ruth E. Carter, the costume designer who won her first Oscar in 2019 for Black Panther —the first black person to win an award in the category—has bagged another for the Black Panther sequel “Wakanda Forever.”
“I pulled myself up from my bootstraps. I started – single-parent household. I wanted to be a costume designer. I studied, I scraped, I dealt with adversity in the industry that sometimes didn’t look like me. I endured.”
Academy Award winner Ruth Carter
Other nominees in the category were Catherine Martin for Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis and Shirley Kurata for Everything All at Once.
“Nice to see you again,” said Carter as in her acceptance speech. “Thank you to the Academy for recognizing the superhero that is a Black woman. She endures, she loves, she overcomes, she is every woman in this film.”
She dedicated the win to her mother who passed away recently at the age of 101. “This past week, Mable Carter became an ancestor. This film prepared me for this moment. Chadwick, please take care of Mom.”
“I pulled myself up from my bootstraps. I started – single-parent household. I wanted to be a costume designer. I studied, I scraped, I dealt with adversity in the industry that sometimes didn’t look like me. I endured,” Carter told the media after the win.
“So, I feel that this win opens the door for other young costume designers may not think that this industry is for them and hopefully they’ll see me and they’ll see my story and they’ll think that they can win an Oscar too.”
Carter’s journey to win an Oscar began in 1992 when she was first nominated for “Malcolm X” and then in 1997 for Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad,” but she failed to win.
The only Black woman to win more than one Oscar, Carter joins a very small list of elite Black artists who have won two Oscars. The list contains just two entries: Denzel Washington and Mahershala Ali, who won twice for Moonlight and Green Book.
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