Years ago, I came across a viral video clip of a strikingly regal, savant-like woman in a white gown, playing two pianos. The clip was from the 1943 film The Heat’s On and the pianist was Hazel Scott. Scott, a child prodigy, attended Juilliard at age 8, before going on to host her own radio show at 14, appear on Broadway at 18, and headline Manhattan venues by 19. In spite of these early successes, though, an environment of discriminatory policies and government paranoia led to the crumbling of her career and reputation.
“The high points of her career took place when she was in her 20s, concertizing at the world's biggest venues, international tours, and appearing in major motion pictures with MGM and Columbia Pictures in Hollywood,” Karen Chilton, author of Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist From Café Society to Hollywood to HUAC, tells Teen Vogue. “She was one of the highest-paid Black entertainers in show business at the time.”
In the face of extreme bigotry, and with everything to lose, Scott took a stand, including her refusal to play segregated shows. The jazz virtuoso was heavily influenced by her mother, Alma, says Chilton, from her piano playing to her political consciousness. Though Scott’s father eventually became estranged from his family, he also took her to political rallies at Marcus Garvey's Liberty Hall, in Harlem, and he “firmly believed in the upliftment of the Black race.”
In the late 1940s, as the Cold War ramped up, Scott, like many politically outspoken Black artists during that time period, was targeted by the US government and labeled a communist sympathizer. “She had no affiliations with the American Communist Party, but during the McCarthy era, she was an easy target as many Black artists who were vocal about civil rights for Black Americans were swept up into the mayhem of the Red Scare,” explains Chilton, who wrote in detail about Scott voluntarily appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in an attempt to clear her name.
Around the same time, Scott was fighting intolerance on a different battleground: in the small town of Pasco, Washington. Pasco is one of three cities, along with Kennewick and Richland, that make up Washington state's Tri-Cities region. At that time, according to an article in the Tri-City Herald, nearly every Black resident of the town lived east of the railroad tracks, in shacks with no indoor plumbing, on dirt roads. In 1948, a “Washington State College study found that 6% of white families in Pasco lived in one room, but 78% of Black families lived in one room, according to Bauman’s paper in Pacific Northwest Quarterly.” For the most part, Black people were not welcome to patronize shops or restaurants in the nice part of town.
In February 1949, Scott, who was snowbound in Pasco while traveling from Oregon, entered a restaurant located in a bus depot looking for dinner. She was refused service by a cashier who said they didn’t serve Negroes. When Scott and her companion went to the police station to complain, an officer threatened to arrest her for disturbing the peace. Although the state of Washington had passed the Public Accommodations Act in 1890, entitling all citizens to access to accommodations at inns, theaters, and restaurants, the legislature removed penalties from the law just five years later, rendering it ineffective.
Backed by the NAACP, Scott filed a federal suit against the restaurant and won. “I sued and I won and I gave all the money to the NAACP,” she once said of her victory. Many civil rights advocates celebrated Scott’s lawsuit, including writers at the Chicago Defender, who wrote that it would benefit everyone facing race-based discrimination.
Scott's suit also ruffled feathers. The year the lawsuit went forward, Portland, Oregon, voted down a civil rights ordinance that would have prohibited city businesses from discriminating against customers based on race, color, ethnicity, or religion. Portland resident Jesse B. Helfrich specifically criticized Hazel Scott and her lawsuit in a letter justifying his opposition to the ordinance, which he called unconstitutional.
Although Scott had no connection to the Tri-Cities, the lawsuit made Pasco and the surrounding area headline news, locally and nationally, as a new arena in the fight for civil rights. Washington state historian Dwayne Mack has singled out Scott’s victory, and the subsequent attention it drew, as the spark that led to statewide civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Law enacted in 1953 by the Washington State Legislature. Oregon also passed its own Public Accommodations Act in 1953.
“Hazel's activism was more a natural compulsion than a premeditated, organized stance,” says Chilton. “It was simply how she was wired. It was her system of belief that justice, equity, fairness, and honesty should be a part of one's everyday existence and present in one's personal and professional interactions.”
I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington and the Pacific Northwest’s most populous, well-known city. The unwelcoming energy of our state’s former sundown towns remains palpable today for many of us. In the 1940s, racial housing covenants were established to keep Pasco as homogenized as possible. Many people are still living in homes or neighborhoods where, according to these permanent clauses in their deeds, Black people are prohibited from owning and renting. These “whites only” restrictive covenants, before the implementation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, created overwhelming obstacles to homeownership for Black, Asian, Latino, and Indigenous communities. Despite new laws against housing discrimination, the residual impact of racist housing policies has continued to be a generational burden for impacted families.
In our state, this extends far beyond Pasco. A team of Washington state researchers are leading a first-of-its-kind Racial Restrictive Covenants Project, which to date, has identified more than 50,000 properties across the state with these restrictions attached.
In a recent op-ed for The Washington Post, the Covenants Project’s director pointed out that, nationally, 73% of white families own homes compared with 45% of Black families. That number drops to 31% of Black families for Washington state residents, one of the lowest rates of Black homeownership in the country. Earlier this year, Washington state lawmakers passed legislation to create a Covenants Homeownership Account to compensate the victims of housing exclusion and their descendants with mortgage assistance.
As with all individual victories against oppression, Scott’s fight in Pasco couldn't upend systemic racism in Washington state, let alone the country. Despite a widely embraced and highly exaggerated characterization of the Pacific Northwest as a liberal oasis, it was still seen as a promised land of sorts for the white separatists of the 1970s and '80s who dreamt up the Northwest Territorial Imperative.
Still, Scott’s lawsuit illuminates an indispensable aspect of history about both the Pacific Northwest region and the famed singer. Says Chilton, “One of the most interesting aspects of Hazel Scott being remembered today as an 'activist' is that it is not a label that she ascribed to herself. She didn't necessarily want credit for it.”
In the 1950s, at a time when Black residents in Pasco and surrounding areas were unable to eat out where they wanted, get basic services, and sometimes even access medical care in their own town, Scott wielded her courage and influence to advocate on their behalf. Regardless of whether or not she perceived herself as an activist, the name Hazel Scott should not only conjure her genius musical talent but also her innate need to speak out on behalf of the unheard.
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