**BONUS**
The Beulah Show
Radio and later television’s first sitcom with a Black female lead was The Beulah Show. Starting as a radio program in 1939, Beulah was originally played by White male actors and was eventually taken over by Hattie McDaniel making her the first Black woman to star in a sitcom. When McDaniel got sick from breast cancer in the early ’50s, Beulah became a rotating casting call. The maid character was played by sisters Lilian and Amanda Randolph , and later Louise Beavers (pictured).
