By her mid-twenties Hazel Scott was earning the modern equivalent of about $1.3 million a year, and in 1950 she became the first person of African descent to host a US network television show. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1920 and raised in Harlem by her mother Alma, a classically trained pianist who led an all-girl jazz band, she auditioned for Juilliard at eight and rose to fame at Cafe Society by swinging the classics, playing Bach counterpoint with her right hand and boogie-woogie with her left.

The episode covers her legendary two-piano performances, her refusal of stereotyped Hollywood roles and the contracts that gave her final cut over her own image, walking away from Columbia's Harry Cohn, refusing to play a segregated venue in Austin, and winning a 1949 lawsuit against a restaurant in Pasco, Washington. It then follows her 1 ...