Nah, Deep Blue Sea came out in 1999. Scream did it in 1996 when the black camera man for Courtney Cox's character hid off-camera most of the movie and waited for the horror to resolve, because he "knew what happens to black men in these movies." Event Horizon (1997) also had a black male crew member survive to counter the "black people die early in horror movies" cliche. Those are the first two movies I think of when it comes to horror movies breaking free from that stereotype.