Hazel Scott
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She was a genius —a Juilliard-trained pianist of dizzying talent, equally adept at jazz and classical music. But along with great talent, she believed, came great responsibility. In 1951, over Philadelphia station WFIL, Hazel Scott spoke not about Bach or boogie, but about bigotry.
At least a decade before Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the former "Darling of Café Society" speaks about her own hopes of a future with "all racial prejudice eliminated."
Born in Trinidad in 1920, Scott calls herself "an American by choice." In this broadcast she carefully toes the line between cautious and candid language, a necessary balance for a black superstar living in the cold-war era of McCarthyism and lockstep beliefs.
Scott married Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in 1945.
Comments
Much respect for this article. I didn't know about her at all. a Trini who was a jazz great back in the day. This made me look up some of her other stuff including https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_WJ4PpxWaE "whatever hapended to Hazel Scott"
Read more about this little known of Trini in the book The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Cafe Society to Hollywood by Karen Chilton.