Moved To Her Feet

Welcome, I am your host, Tara Jabbari. Who was she? Podcast will focus on the stories of women throughout history that were active in the Baha’i Faith. This season is about Hazel Scott, a talented musician and activist. 

In the last few years, Hazel had more than her fair share of ups and downs. Two divorces..lack of steady income..unstable home life.. Hazel started writing deeply personal letters to her friends Mary Lou Williams, and Dizzy and Lorraine Gillespie. 

“My life is one long series of fighting to stay alive.” Hazel wrote to Mary Lou. Her son did not know how much she was struggling in Europe, she didn't want him to know. Mary Lou and the Gillespies would sometimes send Hazel money to help which she gratefully accepted. 

Her health worsened, with falling spells and inability to work. She soon started getting phone calls from people asking if it is true she had leukemia or that Mary Lou sent her $650 dollars and other rumors that were going on. It turned out that Mary Lou was not keeping all the candid letters Hazel wrote to her private. Now the press and public knew about all the hardship she was enduring. She wrote at once to Mary Lou, “I must ask you if you realize what all this scandal is doing to me and my son who is in school. I hope you realize how much this hurts him!” 

She found out that Mary Lou was organizing a benefit on Hazel’s behalf which angered Hazel immensely. She wrote “Please don’t raise any money for me, please! How often must I write the same thing?” 

Finally, she was diagnosed with mononucleosis which explained her constant declining health. By the end of 1968, with Skipper’s request, Hazel moved back to the United States. 

The country had now witnessed the assassinations of Malcolm X, President John F. Kennedy then Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. The press and public openly attacked Hazel for coming back after all that had happened. A hotel waiter in New York confronted her, “I once thought you were the greatest but you have fallen in my estimation because you left America where the fight is.” Hazel spoke to her own defense saying she was fighting “the fight” long before it became a movement. From the start of her career over 30 years prior, she refused to perform in segregated audiences, and during her tours in the Jim Crow South, she explained, “In order to avoid being arrested in the South, I wouldn’t use the “Colored” entrance, and I wouldn’t use the “White” entrance. I used the Yellow Cab entrance.”  

Throughout the 70s, Hazel remained active artistically though she believed that because of the House Un-American Activities Committee nearly 20 years ago, it had kept her blacklisted and the controversy never died down. 

On April 4th, 1972, Adam Clayton Powell Jr died of prostate cancer at the age of sixty-three. He was Harlem’s congressman from 1945 to 1971, his efforts led to the desegregation of public schools, introduced minimum wage standards, passed a record number of over fifty bills and much more. He preached, “When you come to the end of your journey of life, you wont have to answer to any city judge, any board of education or any Supreme Court. You will only answer to God and God is going to say, “Well done. Well done.” 

Hazel spoke of her ex—husband, “The fact that I got to know him as a man took nothing away from the greatness of his drive, his contribution or his achievements. Whatever he lacked as a husband, he more than made up for in his efforts to gain justice for his people.” 

She added, “He was a wonderful father. When I was away on tour, I knew Adam would make a special effort to be home at night and take care of his son.” 

She also confessed, “I ruined my own career, really. Adam said in his book that subconsciously he must have resented my career. Actually, there was nothing subconscious about it. Any woman who has stature of her own - that’s what attracts the man and then, all of a sudden, it’s kill, kill, kill.” 

With the help of her son, daughter-in-law and grandsons, Hazel was settled in a nice apartment in the same building as them on Roosevelt Island in New York City. She was a devoted grandmother, playing the piano and watching films often with her grandchildren. 

She also had evolved in her faith. Having been introduced to the Baha’i Faith by her good friend and famous jazz artist, Dizzy Gillespie, she was interested in learning more. She was particularly intrigued by “progressive revelation.” This is the belief that Manifestations of God represent stages in the spiritual evolution of civilization. These Manifestations include Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Christ and Muhammad. 

Or as she explained, “Whenever man has been ready to absorb more knowledge, God has revealed it.” Baha’u’llah is the Manifestation of the Baha’i Faith.

After years of searching, she found a faith that really spoke to her. Hazel became a Bahai on December 1st, 1968. She said, “All my life people have said to me, ‘The way you talk, you sound like a Baha’i, and I never knew what a Baha’i was…I have always respected everyone’s religion. As I say, there is only one God…That is what is great about (the Baha’i Faith).” 

During the feminist movement in the 1970s, she said, “Any woman who has a great deal to offer the world is in trouble. And if she’s a black woman she’s in deep trouble.” She also wrote an article for Cosmopolitan entitled, “It would be nice to be cherished” about how black women are being under appreciated.  In 1978, Hazel was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. In 1981, Hazel was offered her dream job. She explained to her son, “Joe Kipnus says he’s going to open a new room on 45th Street and he wants to name it after me. I can play as many weeks a year as I want. I don’t have to there all the time. So I can play maybe twenty, twenty-five weeks. I’ll make more than enough money to live happily. And it will be a long-term deal. It’ll be years and years. This will be great.” 

She enthusiastically requested, “Let’s all plan to go to Trinidad. I want my grandchildren to see Trinidad. I haven’t been in years and years and years. Goodness knows I want to go back. And maybe we can even go for a Carnival.” 

Then she paused. Her son asked, “What’s the matter?” 

She replied, “Well, you know the superstition when you get your dream job, you’re going to die.” 

Laughing off his mother's remark, they went on to celebrate. However, on the first week of the club opening, Hazel felt pain in her stomach. She continued to play and the reviews were so good that the club requested she play more often. She performed more and more despite her growing pain until finally, she needed to go to the hospital. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The doctors advised that she will not have much time left. She stayed at the hospital with friends and family visiting often. She would share stories to lighten the mood but a few weeks after her diagnosis, on October 2nd, 1981, Hazel Scott passed away as her friend, Dizzy Gillespie played a soft trumpet solo of, “Alone Together” one of her favorite songs. She was sixty-one years old. 

At her request, Hazel’s funeral was held at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. 

It was filled to capacity. During the service, her son read a Langston Hughes poem that he wrote inspired by Hazel, called To be Somebody: 

Little girl

Dreaming of a baby grand piano

(Not knowing there’s a Steinway bigger, bigger) 

Dreaming of a baby grand to play 

That stretches paddle-tailed across the floor, 

Not standing upright

Like a bad boy in the corner

But sending music

Up the stairs and down the stairs

And out the door

To confound even Hazel Scott

 Who might be passing! 

Oh 

Hazel was buried in Flushing Cemetery in Queens, New York.

When it came to music, many agreed that she was a rare talent that only comes every few generations. Drummer Ray Mosca said, “She’s a challenge musically. You never know what she’s going to do next. She might come up with anything from anywhere.” Bassist, Jamil Nasser agreed: “She’s everything I thought she would be and more. Hazel is one of our queens. She’s an original. A genius who defies category.” 

Hazel fought nonstop for what was right, she achieved many firsts and her talent was truly one of a kind. In one of the last interviews she ever did, she was asked what is the most important part in her life. Hazel replied, “The important part? When I have been able to transmit that which I have been singularly gifted with…to move an audience to their feet.” 

I hope you enjoyed learning about Hazel Scott, I certainly did and hope you are inspired and moved to your feet just like she would want. 

You can also find more information on our Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest @whowasshe podcast. And please, rate and subscribe wherever you listen to this podcast. Who was she was produced, written and edited by me, Tara Jabbari. Script editor is Angela Musacchio. Original music was composed and performed by Sam Redd. Resource material includes two biographies on Hazel, one 

Written by Karen Chilton, published by The University of Michigan Press and written by Susan Engle published by The Baha'i Publishing Trust, U.S.

Other music included Hazel Scott singing C'est divin with the Armand Migiani orchestra

Dizzy Gillespie – Alone Together taken from the 1973 album The Source released on America records.