Glossary
McCarthyism: An intense campaign against alleged communists in the US carried out in the mid-twentieth century under Senator Joseph McCarthy. Many of the accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs, although most did not belong to the Communist Party.
“I’ve always known I was gifted, which is not the easiest thing in the world for a person to know, because you’re not responsible for your gift, only for what you do with it.” Spoken by Hazel Scott herself, these words encapsulate her greatness as a figure who navigated the realms of entertainment and activism to challenge racial inequality in the United States, but who you have most likely never heard of before.
Born on 11th June 1920 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Hazel Dorothy Scott was the only child of Thomas Scott and Alma Long Scott. Just four years later, the Scott family moved to the United States, where Hazel would become one of the highest paid Black entertainers, a steadfast advocate for Civil Rights, and the first person of African descent in the USA to host their own television show.
Encouraged by her mother, a classically trained pianist, Hazel’s musical talent blossomed early in her life. At the age of eight, half that of the usual student age requirement, her piano audition for the Julliard School of Music convinced a professor that she was a “genius”. She was awarded a scholarship for private tuition under Professor Oscar Wagner. This was the first of many barriers she would break over her successful career. In 1933, she entered the male dominated jazz scene in New York City, joining her mother’s all-woman band. Two years later, aged only fifteen, she performed her first independent performance at the Roseland Dance Hall, and by age sixteen she had become known for her regular performances on radio shows. Having gained a reputation as a classical and jazz pianist in the city, Scott’s big break came in 1939, when blues singer Ida Cox was unable to appear for her performance at Café Society in Downtown New York. Founded by Barney Josephson, the club had opened its doors a year prior and had quickly become a hotspot for jazz music and progressive ideas. The venue provided a platform for Black artists to perform for racially mixed audiences, challenging the prevailing segregation norms of the time. Discussions on political issues were also held in the venue, and it quickly became a unique and influential institution in New York’s cultural landscape. Left without a performer, and on the recommendation of Jack Gilford who hosted shows at the club and had heard Hazel play at a bar in Harlem, Josephson invited her to audition. Hazel secured the job, and a temporary slot at the club until Ida’s return became a seven and a half year stint, with a 1942 Daily News article dubbing her ‘High Priestess of Hot Piano’ and heralding her ‘an institution’ at the club compared to the venue’s other revolving artists. Over the years at Café Society, her earnings rose from $65 per week to $4000 per week, and by 1945 her annual salary equates to over $1 million today.
Having risen to stardom in New York’s jazz scene, Scott’s fame and experience at Café Society led her to adopt a hard line with regard to venues she would play. She had it stipulated in her contract that she would not play before segregated audiences. Her stance on the issue was uncompromising and led her to walk out of several venues, with one such instance leading to her being escorted out of Austin, Texas, by Texas Rangers for her safety after her refusal to play to an audience separated by ‘Black’ and ‘white’ zones caused a violent uproar. After the incident, she told Time Magazine: “Why would anyone come near me, a Negro, and refuse to sit beside someone just like me?”.
By the mid 1940s, Hazel had made her Broadway debut in Sing Out the News and had started to take on roles in movies, appearing the majority of the time as herself. On the Hollywood scene, Hazel was outspoken about the treatment of Black women within the industry. At the time, it was typical for Black women to be cast predominantly in roles as maids, prostitutes, and slaves. For herself, Hazel had it stipulated in her contract that she would not play such roles. But she also advocated for the other Black women on the sets that she worked on. In her first film appearance, Shout About (1943), Scott played herself and her contract stipulated that she “[wouldn’t] wear a handkerchief or dirty clothes in a film.” On the set of The Heat’s On (1943), Scott refused to work until the eight African American actresses on the film whose costumes included dirty aprons “for a worn effect”, were replaced with clean ones. For her protests, especially as a result of her three-day-long strike on The Heat’s On, she was blacklisted by executives and her Hollywood career was cut short.
Scott’s fight against racial discrimination also extended into a legal case. In 1949, backed by prominent Civil Rights organisation, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she won a racial discrimination federal lawsuit. The case was the first federal lawsuit against racial discrimination in the Inland Northwest and was brought against husband and wife restaurant owners in Pasco for $50,000. Hazel and companion Eunice Wolfe had been refused service based on their race, with Hazel’s complaint specifying that she was denied service “without any reason whatsoever except she was a Negro.”. The case garnered much media attention at the time. The Evening News reported: ‘Hazel Scott Accuses Coast Restaurant’ and complained that Hazel and her husband, Harlem Congressman, pastor, and civil rights leader, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., were both acting as plaintiffs, despite the fact that he was not present at the restaurant. Scott won the case and gave the money she was awarded to the NAACP.
Just over a year later, in April 1950, the first fifteen minute episode of The Hazel Scott Show aired on the DuMont Network - the first television show in the U.S. to feature a Black woman as its host. Episodes featured several piano performances by Scott, and, from its first broadcast, the show was immensely popular, leading the network to quickly triple the number of weekly national broadcasts. At only thirty years old, Hazel Scott had become a trailblazer in the entertainment industry and a symbol of resistance to racial injustice. However, only one month after her show aired, in the shadow of McCarthyism, Hazel Scott, like many of her contemporaries e.g., Langston Hughes, was declared a communist sympathiser by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). This followed a claim in Red Channels (a pamphlet compiled by former FBI agents which listed names of individuals in the entertainment industry who were suspected of having communist affiliations or sympathies) that she was affiliated with, participated in, or sponsored numerous communist organisations. The accusations damaged her reputation within the entertainment industry, which was left in ruins when she testified before the HUAC on 22 September 1950. Hazel denied all allegations and criticised the onslaught of false accusations against performers. Exactly one week later, The Hazel Scott Show was permanently cancelled.
In the years that followed, Hazel and her husband separated, divorcing in 1960. In 1957, she moved to Paris with her son, Adam Clayton Powell III. She was able to revive her music career in Europe, although her career never again reached pre-McCarthy heights. Undeterred by being blacklisted in the U.S., Scott continued her advocacy of Civil Rights. In 1963, she marched alongside James Baldwin and many others to the U.S. Embassy in Paris to support Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. Scott returned to the U.S. in the late 1960s and died of pancreatic cancer in 1981, aged only sixty-one.
Hazel Scott stood out in mid-twentieth century America for her ability to strike the keys of entertainment and activism in perfect harmony. She felt the responsibility of her gift and with it, she relentlessly challenged racial injustice and inequality. Hazel Scott, among many things, was a pianist, protestor, and pioneer deserving of a place in popular memory alongside widely celebrated figures such as Harry Belafonte and Ella Fitzgerald.
Further Reading
Chilton, K., Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC (The University of Michigan Press, 2008)
Mack, D., ‘Hazel Scott: A Career Curtailed’, The Journal of African American History, 91.2 (2006), 153-170
Mack, D., ‘Hazel Scott (1920-1981)’, BlackPast.org, (2007) <https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/scott-hazel-1920-1981/#:~:text=In%201949%2C%20Scott%20won%20a,an%20African%20American%20female%20host> [Last Accessed: 26/01/2024]
McGee, K. A., Some Like it Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television, 1928-1959 (Wesleyan University Press, 2009)
Regester, C. B., African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900-1960 (Indiana University Press, 2010)
Tucker, N., ‘Hazel Scott: The Gorgeous Face of Jazz at the Mid-Century’, Library of Congress Blogs, (2021) <https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2021/10/hazel-scott-the-gorgeous-face-of-jazz-at-the-mid-century/> [Last Accessed: 26/01/2024]