Say it Loud: Black, Immigrant & Proud
Monday, February 17, 2014
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Hazel Scott in the 1940s (James Kreigsman/Karen Chilton)
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Established in the year 2000, the New York Public Radio Archives are the station's physical link to its rich and storied past.
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Black History Month from the Archives
To celebrate Black History Month, the New York Public Radio Archives has pulled together some of the department's leading preservation work concerning African-American history.
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She was a black 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's marriage in 1945 to the crusading congressman Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. had placed them both firmly at the center of American politics and frequent controversy. Following a historic breakthrough in television as the first African-American to host her own show, she’d been placed on McCarthy’s ‘blacklist’ and appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for alleged communist activity.
Just months after this interview with Philadelphia station WFIL, Hazel Scott would be forced to leave the United States for France. She would live as an expatriate in Paris for the next decade. And yet, she remained vigilant: “I think America is as big and as strong as its weakest point…it is up to a Negro to be the conscience of this great land of ours.”
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's marriage in 1945 to the crusading congressman Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. had placed them both firmly at the center of American politics and frequent controversy. Following a historic breakthrough in television as the first African-American to host her own show, she’d been placed on McCarthy’s ‘blacklist’ and appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for alleged communist activity.
Just months after this interview with Philadelphia station WFIL, Hazel Scott would be forced to leave the United States for France. She would live as an expatriate in Paris for the next decade. And yet, she remained vigilant: “I think America is as big and as strong as its weakest point…it is up to a Negro to be the conscience of this great land of ours.”
Editors:
Marcos Sueiro BalMore in:
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Karen Chilton
KAREN CHILTON is author of Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC (University of Michigan Press)
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Hazel Scott
A child prodigy, born in Port-au-Spain Trinidad in 1920 and raised in Harlem, Hazel Scott’s musical talent was cultivated by her musician mother, Alma Long Scott, as well as several great jazz luminaries of the ...
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