Although actress Diahann Carroll was the first African American woman to star in a weekly television series, she technically was not the first black woman to host an American TV program. That title went to jazz singer and pianist Hazel Scott.
For ten years from 1946-56, the DuMont Television Network aired such programs as The Arthur Murray Dance Party, kiddie show Captain Video, Big Time Wrestling, and The Ernie Kovacs Show. For a few weeks in the summer of 1950, DuMont also aired The Hazel Scott Show.
The 15-minute show was seen Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings from 7:45 to 8 pm. The host Hazel Scott was featured on piano and vocals performing everything from classical music to Broadway tunes to modern jazz.
The show lasted less than three months and was canceled due to controversy.
Hazel Scott was born in Trinidad but moved with her family to the US when she was a baby.
At age 3, Hazel began playing piano like her classically-trained mother, and by age 5 she was deemed a musical prodigy.
The Juilliard School of Music never took students younger than age 16, but they made an exception and allowed her to enroll… when she was eight years old.
By age 13, Hazel began performing all around New York City. At 15, she played with her mother’s jazz group and then performed at the Roseland Ballroom opening for Count Basie. At 18, she debuted on Broadway in a musical revue.
1939: Billie Holiday was headlining at a Greenwich Village nightclub called Cafe Society. When she dropped out of her commitment three weeks earlier than scheduled, Holiday selected Hazel Scott to take her place.
Audiences enjoyed Scott’s take on classical tunes, which she jazzed up with improvised riffs. Her first album sold well.
After moving to Los Angeles, Scott accepted movie roles… but only as herself as a singer and pianist. Several offers had her cast as a singing housekeeper or nanny, a stereotype she refused to portray.
She would only perform live for integrated audiences and demanded pay equal to her white counterparts.
1945: Hazel moved back to New York City and began an affair with Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., New York’s first African American Congressman. Scandal followed because Powell was still a married man and a Baptist minister. However, the couple were married just days after his divorce from his first wife. One year later, Hazel gave birth to their only child, Adam Clayton Powell III.
1950: The DuMont Network put Hazel on the air, and she introduced the select few Americans with television sets to some jazz legends, including Max Roach on drums and Charles Mingus on bass.
McCarthyism and anti-Communist fervor had begun that year, and blacklisting began to spread. A newsletter called Red Channels: A Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television had been published. It labeled over 150 artists as Communist sympathizers.
Hazel Scott’s name appeared in the publication.
She voluntarily appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to deny those published claims. She testified that had no Communist ties.
But the damage was done. The DuMont Network could no longer find sponsorship for her program. By late September 1950, The Hazel Scott Show was cancelled.
She eventually divorced Congressman Powell, moved to Europe, and kept performing there. When she returned to New York in the late 1960s, her glory days were over.
Hazel Scott performed live for the last time in the summer of 1981 and shortly thereafter died of pancreatic cancer at age 61.
Since the DuMont Network didn’t record most of their programs - very few did in that era - there are unfortunately no existing videos of Hazel Scott’s pioneering TV show.
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