On the evening of 14 April 1950, the DuMont Network televised a fifteen-minute musical variety program featuring Hazel Scott. A beautiful, world-renowned African American pianist, singer, and actress, Scott was married to Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the outspoken U.S. Representative from Harlem, New York City, and charismatic pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. At the opening of Scott's show, the camera scanned across a city skyline, then revealed a set resembling the living room of an elegant penthouse. There sat the shimmering Scott at piano, like an empress on throne, wrote film and television critic Donald Bogle, presenting at every turn a vision of a woman of experience and sophistication. Scott's show was the first to feature an African American female host. (1) Even a celebrity of caliber, Scott, like most African Americans during the early phase of the Cold War, was no stranger to Jim Crow segregation. She, however, acted with dignity while promoting American patriotism and racial integration, and denouncing communism. In short, Scott was an astonishing sultry song stylist who created her own concept of black pride and steadfastly adhered to it. (2) During the era of legal segregation, African Americans often opposed racial discrimination by using what political anthropologist James C. Scott has described as infrapolitics. In isolated incidents they challenged white racist authority and policies through subtle forms of resistance. (3) These interactions rarely received overt or noticeable attention, but nevertheless represented important moral or personal victories. In contrast, James Scott's other term, public transcript, the shorthand way of describing the open interaction between subordinates and those who dominate, is a better term Hazel Scott's defiance of racism and the Cold War purges. (4) She waged a personal crusade through the entertainment industry, the federal court system, and even a congressional subcommittee. Consequently, records reveal that racial discrimination and the communist witch-hunts of the early 1950s curtailed Scott's entertainment career in the United States. STAR OF STAGE AND SCREEN Scott was born on 11 June 1920, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Her father, R. Thomas Scott, was a respected black scholar and college professor, and mother, Alma Long Scott, was a musician from an elite local family. In 1924 the Scotts migrated to the U.S. and settled in Harlem, where Hazel, a musical prodigy, studied classical piano with Paul Wagner, a professor at the Julliard School of Music. (5) In the late 1930s and early 1940s career blossomed, as she became a regular performer earning a weekly salary of $2,000 at New York's elegant dinner club Cafe Her husband once fondly referred to as the darling of Cafe Society. She had already broken every show business record a one-star show at a supper club, and she was its grande vedette. No one came to challenge domain, Powell exclaimed. (6) Scott became famous for jazzing the classics, turning the passionate chords of Rachmaninoff into a sizzling boogie-woogie. She also gave popular tunes a classical twist. (7) Entertainment critic James Agee, however, once condemned playing niggery boogie-woogie. (8) Despite the criticism, Scott--with intelligence, hauteur, worldliness--was generally considered a progressive symbol African American female entertainers. (9) In 1938 talent brought to Broadway, where she performed in the musicals Singing Out the News and, four years later, Priorities of 1942. The 1940s were thrilling years Scott, with appearances in major Hollywood film productions, including Something to Shout About, I Dood It, and The Heat's On in 1943, Broadway Rhythm in 1944, and Rhapsody in Blue in 1945. Scott's career blossomed before the modern Civil Rights Movement. In the 1930s and 1940s entertainers such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong challenged Jim Crow segregation. …
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Jan 1, 2012
Grant J Rich 
Open Access
