Celebrating Hazel Scott: Pianist, Singer, Actress and Activist

This special evening saluted a pathbreaking Black artist whose legacy continues to resonate today. Brilliant and glamorous, fluent in seven languages, Hazel Scott was a prodigiously talented jazz and classical pianist, a true media star who enjoyed fame on the concert stage, in film and in television in the 1940s and ‘50s. Defying segregation and breaking racial barriers as a performer, she would become an influential Civil Rights activist whose courageous testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities damaged a remarkable career.

Enjoy these excerpts from a special event created in cooperation with Washington Performing Arts and Dance Theatre of Harlem. The original event included a film about the creation of Sounds of Hazel, as well as an excerpt from the ballet co-commissioned by Washington Performing Arts. The artist’s biographer Karen Chilton moderated a panel discussion bringing together Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Artistic Director Virginia Johnson, choreographer Tiffany Rea-Fisher, Hazel Scott’s son, Adam Clayton Powell III, and Janet McKinney, an archivist at the Library of Congress.

Program: [:22] Introduction
[09:57] Panel Discussion