A screen shot from "Rhapsody in Blue" (1945).

Long before Oprah ruled the airwaves, the jazz and classical pianist and singer Hazel Scott was the first woman of color to have her own TV show, which aired in 1950 on the DuMont network. Scott’s show was quickly cancelled, likely because of her outspoken opposition to McCarthyism and segregation. The entertainer was married to Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., but she was her own strong-willed person. In 1960, she wrote an article for Ebony magazine, explaining why she had spent the past three years living in Paris, during which time she was seriously ill and rumored to be estranged from her husband. An excerpt:

“I learned a lot in Paris about people and about myself. One does not look into the face of death, as I have, and come away worrying about pettiness and cattiness and gossip and conforming. It seems every time I am near death, someone or something is asking me over and over: How stupid can you get? How many changes will you need before you find out what’s important? This last time, when I spent a month or so in bed, I got the message. I am not likely to ever forget it. Love is important. Love. Some people go their whole lives without learning that very simple lesson. My three years out of America were three years of much needed rest not from work but from racial tension.”

Scott and Powell eventually divorced. She passed away from pancreatic cancer in New York on October 2, 1981.