# Celebrating Hazel Scott: Pianist, Singer, Actress and Activist

This special evening saluted a groundbreaking Black artist whose legacy continues to resonate today. Brilliant, glamorous and 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.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2023
- By: Library Of Congress. Music Division
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2025661271/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2025661271?play=1)