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Have you ever watched a scary movie with a significant black character in it and prayed he or she didn’t die first?! Well, of course you have. But the black guy dies first stigma hasn’t always been the case for a few famous black actors and actresses who managed to smartly survive or butt-kick their way through to the end of many horror sub-genres.

In celebration of Halloween, MadameNoire is highlighting black actors (and their characters) who made it in popular horror films… sometimes as the lead! Black viewers of these films didn’t have to scream at the screen for unnecessarily killing off the brother or sister — thinking, “he or she could’ve made it.”

Keith David, The Thing (1982)

To kick off our list is David who became one of the first black horror film survivors in a significant role. This is a pretty big deal since before the 1980s all we had were black exploitation horror films re-imaging horror film classics like Blacula (1972), Blackenstein (1973) and Abby (1974), which was sued for being a ripoff of The Exorcist (1973). But David played a different kind of role as Childs, a chief mechanic of U.S. Outpost 31 in Antarctica. He survived “the thing” infestation along with MacReady (Kurt Russell).