Hazel Scott - A child prodigy and genius born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad - Women's History Month

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Hazel Scott


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.

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