Harry Belafonte: legendary singer who lived out activism

Even at the height of his fame as a groundbreaking musician, Harry Belafonte was only interested in the money or the celebrity insofar as it could fuel his campaigns for social justice.

As the US civil rights movement gained momentum, Belafonte took on a role that went far beyond moral support. He became a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. and personally opened his wallet to fund the cause.

“I could have made $2 billion or $3 billion — and ended up with some very cruel addiction — but I chose to be a civil rights warrior instead,” the trailblazing singer and actor said in a 2007 interview.

Belafonte, who died of congestive heart failure on Tuesday at the age of 96, soared to the highest heights of showbiz — the African American artist won an array of awards for his performances, introducing Caribbean flair to mainstream US music.

But he is also remembered for his deep personal investment in civil rights — from the American struggle for racial equality to famine in Ethiopia to South Africa’s battle against apartheid.

“When people think of activism, they always think some sacrifice is involved, but I’ve always considered it a privilege and an opportunity,” he said in a 2004 speech at Emory University.

– Life of struggle –

Born in Harlem on March 1, 1927 to a Jamaican mother and a father from the French territory of Martinique, Belafonte spent part of his childhood in Jamaica before returning to New York, a binational upbringing that shaped his musical and political outlooks.

Despite his vocal gifts and striking good looks, Belafonte did not grow up believing he would enjoy a promising career.

He suffered dyslexia and dropped out of high school to serve as a US Navy munitions loader in World War II. When he returned, he had few employable skills and worked as a janitor.

But he showed gusto at the job and, as a tip, was given two tickets to a performance at the American Negro Theater, where he was mesmerized by the magnetic pull of the stage.

He took acting classes and, at the theater in Harlem, made a lifelong friend who became another groundbreaking African American actor: Sidney Poitier, who was born just eight days before Belafonte to parents from The Bahamas.

Belafonte said that his own Jamaican roots shaped “almost everything” in his life.

His mother came from Jamaica “to find the generosity of the American dream and discovered that that was not available to her,” he told public television.

– Early fame… and controversy –

Belafonte’s calypso, the genre of Caribbean music that drew from West African and French influences, offered a dash of exoticism for a United States in the midst of post-World War II prosperity and suburbanization.

His third album, entitled simply “Calypso” and released in 1956, became the first LP to sell more than one million copies in the United States.

The album featured what became Belafonte’s signature song, “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).” Based on a Jamaican folk tune, Belafonte sings with a Caribbean accent, “Stack banana ’til de morning come / Daylight come and we wan go home.”

Belafonte scoffed at suggestions that the song was simply feel-good dance music, calling the track a rebellious take on workers who were demanding fair wages.

Even in his early career, Belafonte did not shy away from controversy.

He starred in the 1957 film “Island in the Sun” as an upwardly mobile Black politician on a fictional island who becomes involved with a woman from the white elite, in one of Hollywood’s earliest depictions of inter-racial romance.

– Key role in US civil rights movement –

Belafonte broke racial barriers in entertainment and worked for racial justice in politics.

In 1954, he became the first African American man to win a Tony Award, for his role in the Broadway musical “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.”

Six years later, he became the first African American to win an Emmy Award for “Tonight with Belafonte,” his musical television program. He also won three Grammys.

Always wary of politicians, Belafonte met for three hours in 1960 with then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who hoped to gain support from a prominent African American.

Kennedy did not initially win his endorsement, with Belafonte recalling later that the senator from Massachusetts “knew so little about the Black community.”

But Belafonte helped arrange a meeting between King and Kennedy, who with his brother Robert F. Kennedy intervened months later when the civil rights leader was arrested in Georgia.

After his election, Kennedy appointed Belafonte to the advisory committee of the newly created Peace Corps, through which the young president hoped the United States would showcase its power through non-military means.

But Belafonte said that while many in the Peace Corps hoped to “show how beautiful we are as a people,” his mission was different — to expose young Americans to the struggles of the developing world.

Belafonte brought King and the Birmingham, Alabama pastor Fred Shuttlesworth to his New York apartment to plan out the 1963 campaign to integrate the notoriously racist southern city.

When King was thrown into a Birmingham jail, Belafonte raised $50,000 — nearly $500,000 in current value — to post his bail, at a time when the rise of pop music was bringing wealth and lavish lifestyles to many entertainers.

Later, Belafonte spent increasing time in Africa, especially Kenya, and became one of the foremost US artists fighting apartheid in South Africa.

His final album, “Paradise in Gazankulu,” released in 1988, revolved around the oppression of black South Africans and was recorded partially in Johannesburg with local artists.

Belafonte also initiated the USA for Africa supergroup whose “We Are The World” song in 1985 raised millions of dollars for Ethiopia’s famine victims.

– Fallout with King children –

Belafonte remained strident in his views late in his life.

In 2008, he called then-president George W. Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world” in reference to the Iraq invasion as the singer visited Venezuela to rally behind its firebrand president Hugo Chavez, a frequent US nemesis.

But Belafonte increasingly saw a gap with a younger generation.

In 2012, he took to task Jay-Z and his wife Beyonce, saying that the titanic music couple had “turned their back on social responsibility.”

Jay-Z hit back in song, rapping “Mr. Day-O, major fail.”

More painfully, Belafonte fell out with King’s three surviving children, who kept him away from the funeral of the civil rights leader’s widow Coretta Scott King, in part due to the singer’s embrace of Chavez.

In 2014, Belafonte settled a lawsuit with the children, whom he accused of veering from their father’s legacy, in a dispute over the singer’s possession of documents from King.

Despite his frequent criticism of US policies, Belafonte said that the United States “offers a dream that cannot be fulfilled as easily anywhere else in the world” — but one that is only attainable through “struggle.”

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Black Arts Legacies: Poet Quenton Baker evokes beauty and terror

In 2015 Quenton Baker was reading Walter Johnson’s 1999 book Soul by Soul, an investigation of the slave trade in antebellum America, when they stumbled upon a brief mention of an unfamiliar event: an 1841 revolt aboard the ship Creole, in which enslaved people successfully overtook the brig and escaped to freedom in the Caribbean. “I was like, What is this?” Baker says. How had the history buff never heard this story before?

After a largely fruitless inquiry to the U.S. Office of Records, Baker reached out to a University of Wisconsin professor (who had included the Creole story in one of their courses) and obtained a 19th-century U.S. Senate document — one of the few contemporaneous accounts of the revolt. But it included only depositions of angry white slavers and crew members, who misshaped this incredible tale and drowned out the voices of enslaved people.

To channel their strong emotional response, Baker turned to erasure poetry, a form they’d previously not had much interest in. But this document seemed to demand it.

“I was really mad reading the document,” Baker says. “I wanted to redact or do an erasure because I felt like this document is emblematic of the civic level of erasure of Black folks.”

Using a black Sharpie as a scalpel, Baker began blacking out the words of white slavers and shaping the rest into thoughts they imagined those enslaved people might have spoken or felt. Tilling the soil that would later become their 2023 book, ballast, Baker turned this documented violence and historical indifference into a channel to the past:

it has been impossible for me

the mutiny and murder

of

Knowing

“These people are buried beneath this document,” Baker remembers thinking. “If I chip it away, will something come out that’s an echo or a ghost or a haunting of them?”

As a poet Baker orbits the “afterlife of slavery,” a term coined by historian and theorist Saidiya Hartman to express how chattel slavery’s legacy persists in the lives of Black folks. While focusing on stories willfully skimmed over by historians, Baker is careful not to project agency backward where it didn’t exist.

“It’s part of the poet’s responsibility and part of the artist’s responsibility to not let these people be forgotten,” Baker says, citing an influential Claudia Rankine interview on her poetic philosophy. “And in that lack of forgetting also not revictimizing or retraumatizing them.”

In their 2016 book This Glittering Republic, Baker evokes George Stinney Jr., a Black child executed by the United States in 1944. They underscore the boy’s childlike innocence by imagining him licking an ice cream cone in “Drip”: Take your time/enjoy the fat chill/of each lick/and don’t let nobody rush you.

In “Museum of Man,” Baker sits with Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman exhibited in a freak show in 19th-century Europe, reflecting on her exploitation and humanity. There will never be a moon/or a season free from the heritage/of your harvested skeleton–/but you’re more than dismemberment/aren’t you?

Born in Seattle in 1985 to a Polish-Jewish mother and a Black “country boy” father from Illinois, Baker grew up on North Beacon Hill and went to Garfield High School in the Central District. “The south end is my home forever,” they say. It’s where they nursed their love of reading: “I was in the library all the time … I know those librarians got tired of me.”

From their teens through their mid-20s as a student at Seattle University, Baker performed for crowds along the West Coast as Intro (short for “Introspective”) in the rap group Gray Matters. But by age 25, writing crowd-pleasing rhymes didn’t artistically satisfy. “I want to create art with language that, for me, has some type of meaning or purpose,” they say.

In 2010 Baker left hip-hop and started life as a poet, getting their MFA in poetry at the University of Southern Maine. But music left a permanent mark on their artistry: “The concept of rhythm, the concept of flow — all those things I try to maintain [now] in a different way.”

Baker explores difficult subjects in all of their work, illuminating aspects of being Black in America, perceptions of Blackness and the lasting effects of racism. In addition to their four published books of poetry, Baker’s poems have appeared in publications such as Poetry Northwest and The Rumpus. In the past several years, Baker has received a coveted Cave Canem fellowship; two nominations for The Pushcart Prize; the 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist Residency; and 2017 Jack Straw and 2021 NEA fellowships.

This is all to say: They stay busy.

They also continually experiment, iterate and push their work forward. In 2016 Baker won the James W. Ray Venture Project Award, which gives winners the opportunity to mount their own show at the Frye Art Museum. In 2018, an exhibit of the Creole Senate documents — blown up, printed directly on the wall and redacted using paint rollers — opened at the Frye. By working at this massive scale, Baker allowed viewers to physically confront the work, making the poetry, and therefore the voices within, more tangible.

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Quenton Baker performed their work for King County employees on Jan. 12, 2016. The performance was one part of the poetry series “Reflecting on Race and Racism through Spoken Word, Story, and Conversation.” (King County DNRP)

“We’re cut from the same cloth, in that we don’t necessarily write about Black joy,” Anastacia-Reneé, a fellow poet and Black Arts Legacies alum, says of Baker. “It doesn’t mean that we don’t have love. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have joy … They write about historical atrocities that I think need to be talked about.”

Poets like Anastacia-Reneé, who Baker says is like a big sister, keep them rooted in Seattle. “Community has given me permission to do a lot of things,” they say. “Seeing people be their full courageous selves in their work really pushed me to do the same thing.”

That doesn’t mean living in Seattle is easy. Surviving in this city as a Black poet is difficult, even though it’s their hometown.

“Seattle has always been full of people and politicians well-versed in progressive etiquette but lacking in terms of actual care for marginalized peoples,” Baker says. “It’s definitely been accelerated by the tech presence and the massive influx of capital, but it still feels like the same city in a lot of ways. Just with a lot fewer Black folks to provide a counterbalance, or an escape.”

Baker is one artist providing that necessary counterbalance. Their practice brings forth both the beauty and the terror of being Black in the United States, provoking wonder and a bit of a shiver. They may focus on the long shadow of the past in the present, but their work also contains nuggets of how to survive in the future, laid out in poems like “Inversion”:

I am cold-shouldered time,

misused spirit made chattel,

crude ballast.

I cannot be buried–

I carry the sunset in my mouth.

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Missy Elliott’s Vow To Help Mom Escape Abusive Relationship Motivated Her Career

Missy Elliott has revealed that her mother’s unfortunate abuse inspired her to make music her career.

On Monday (April 23), a fan tweeted about wanting to know more about the Virginia native, asking for a documentary to better understand “her drive to remain persistent in a male-dominated industry at the time.” Missy quote tweeted the inquiry and responded, giving a detailed explanation of her inspiration.

“I seen many strong women in the industry be4 me that made it through,” the icon replied. “My mom was in [an] abusive relationship, so I told her I would make it so I could get her out of that situation & I would make sure she’d never have to work again; that’s what really kept me going.”

And that she did. During her storied career, Missy has won four GRAMMY awards and has become the first woman emcee to have six platinum albums, per The Grape Juice.

Her success has been celebrated with the Supa Dupa Fly entertainer nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, honored with the Global Impact Award, and even given a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Recently, Black Music Honors announced that the triple threat is set to be heralded at their 8th annual event. The event helps to shine a light on Black artists who have made a significant impact in music.

“Black music is the heartbeat of our culture, and the honorees for this year’s Black Music Honors represent the soul of American music,” founder and executive producer Don Jackson said.

“We pay homage to the musical innovators who have paved the way for future generations. Our tribute performances not only celebrate the honorees of yesterday but also showcase the influence and impact of their iconic sounds and styles on today’s artists with a beautiful symbiosis of past and present.”

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Harry Belafonte on His Artistic Values and His Activism

Harry Belafonte, the singer, actor and activist whose wide-ranging success blazed a trail for other Black artists in the 1950s, died on Tuesday at age 96.

A child of Harlem, Mr. Belafonte used his platform at the height of the entertainment world to speak out frequently on his music, how Black life was depicted onscreen and, most important to him, the civil rights movement. Here are some of the insights Mr. Belafonte provided to The New York Times during his many decades in the public spotlight, as they appeared at the time:

Mr. Belafonte’s string of hits, including “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jamaica Farewell,” helped create an American obsession with Caribbean music that led his record company to promote him as the “King of Calypso.”

But Mr. Belafonte never embraced that sort of monarchical title, rejecting “purism” as a “cover-up for mediocrity” and explaining that he saw his work as a mash-up of musical styles.

He told The New York Times Magazine in 1959 that folk music had “hidden within it a great dramatic sense, and a powerful lyrical sense.” He also plainly conceded: “I don’t have a great voice.”

In 1993, he told The Times that he used his songs “to describe the human condition and to give people some insights into what may be going on globally, from what I’ve experienced.”

He said that “Day-O,” for instance, was a way of life.

“It’s a song about my father, my mother, my uncles, the men and women who toil in the banana fields, the cane fields of Jamaica,” he said. “It’s a classic work song.”

Mr. Belafonte’s success in music helped him become a Hollywood leading man. In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Belafonte and his friend Sidney Poitier landed more substantive and nuanced roles than Black actors had previously received.

Nonetheless, Mr. Belafonte was left largely unsatisfied.

Writing for The Times in 1968, he complained that “the real beauty, the soul, the integrity of the black community is rarely reflected” on television.

“The medium is dominated by white-supremacy concepts and racist attitudes,” he wrote. “TV excludes the reality of Negro life, with all its grievances, passions and aspirations, because to depict that life would be to indict (or perhaps enrich?) much of what is now white America and its institutions. And neither networks nor sponsors want that.”

Mr. Belafonte emphasized that his 10-year-old son saw few Black heroes on television.

“The nobility in his heritage and the values that could complement his positive growth and sense of manhood are denied him,” he wrote. “Instead, there is everything to tear him down and give him an inferiority complex. He will see the Negro only as a rioter and a social problem, never as a whole human being.”

Roughly 25 years later, Mr. Belafonte was circumspect, suggesting in an interview with The Times that little had changed.

“Even today, on the big screen, the pictures that are always successful are pictures where blacks appear in the way white America buys it,” he said in 1993. “And we’re told that what we really want to express is not profitable and is not commercially viable.”

Even as Mr. Belafonte was in the prime of his entertainment career, he was intently focused on activism and civil rights.

“Back in 1959,” Mr. Belafonte told The Times in 1981, “I fully believed in the civil-rights movement. I had a personal commitment to it, and I had my personal breakthroughs — I produced the first black TV special; I was the first black to perform at the Waldorf Astoria. I felt if we could just turn the nation around, things would fall into place.”

But Mr. Belafonte lamented that by the middle of the 1970s, the movement had ended.

“When the doors of Hollywood shut on minorities and blacks at the end of the 70’s,” he said, “a lot of black artists had been enjoying the exploitation for 10 years. But one day they found the shop had closed down.”

Mr. Belafonte remained outspoken about politics in his later years. In 2002 he accused Secretary of State Colin L. Powell of abandoning his principles to “come into the house of the master”; he called President George W. Bush a “terrorist” in 2006, and lamented in 2012 that modern celebrities had “turned their back on social responsibility.”

“There’s no evidence that artists are of the same passion and of the same kind of commitment of the artists of my time,” he told The Times in 2016. “The absence of black artists is felt very strongly because the most visible oppression is in the black community.”

In 2016 and again in 2020, he visited the opinion pages of The Times to urge voters to reject Donald J. Trump.

“The vote is perhaps the single most important weapon in our arsenal,” Mr. Belafonte told The Times in the 2016 article. “The same things needed now are the same things needed before,” he added. “Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die. ”

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At La MaMa, a Dance Festival That Embraces States of Change

About 20 minutes into “Broken Theater,” at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater on Sunday afternoon, Bobbi Jene Smith shouted: “Thank you, everyone! Let’s take five.” The cast of about a dozen performers, who had been in the throes of an emotionally charged scene, relaxed as Smith, the show’s director, began to address the audience. “Welcome to La Ma—,” she said, then shook her head: “Let’s try that again.” The scene rewound and repeated, until she called “take five” again.

“We’re still working on some things,” she explained. “This piece is constantly in a state of change.”

This fourth-wall-breaking moment was characteristic of “Broken Theater,” which, over the course of a tumultuous hour and 40 minutes, repeatedly stops to comment on itself, blurring the boundaries between reality and performance, rehearsal and finished artwork.

But it also encapsulated a certain anything-goes spirit of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, now in its final week at La MaMa’s East Village headquarters. (“Broken Theater,” produced by American Modern Opera Company, is the culminating event.) A platform for experimental performance, the festival reflects the eclectic tastes of its veteran curator, Nicky Paraiso, accommodating work at various stages of development. Embracing states of change is perhaps its only constant from year to year.

While playing with notions of incompleteness, “Broken Theater” is one of the more ambitious and fully realized works at this year’s festival. Arriving on the heels of Smith’s recent premiere for Paris Opera Ballet (created with Or Schraiber, who also performs here), it could almost be a sequel to her 2019 La MaMa production “Lost Mountain.” It too features a large cast entangled in fraught romances and familial conflicts, depicted through intensely dramatic dance-theater. In an artistic process, the work suggests, the line between collaborator and kin can be blurry.

Resisting linear narrative, the show tumbles forth as a sequence of stormy, self-reflexive vignettes that seamlessly integrate the full ensemble, including the exceptional musicians Keir GoGwilt (violin), Mikael Darmanie (piano) and Coleman Itzkoff (cello). Julia Eichten, in the role of stage manager, provides some much-needed comic relief. The theater is bare except for a few cluttered tables, chairs, a piano and a costume rack; a door at the back of the stage, left open, reveals the mirrors and vanity lights of a dressing room.

Tensions run high from the outset, beginning with a solo for the seemingly tormented Jonathan Frederickson — later introduced as the father and rehearsal director — who is soon joined by Smith. Pinning him to a table on his back, Smith buries her head in his torso and yells “Run!” as he futilely kicks and screams. Periodically he mimes closing and opening a set of imaginary curtains, indicating that some of this isn’t meant to be seen.

When Smith is asked to “audition for the role of the mother,” the proverbial tables turn: now she is the one pinned down, by the glare of a spotlight and the director’s judgmental eye. As commanded, she pretends to hold or feed her baby, or reacts to prompts like “your baby won’t stop crying,” a cue to thrash back and forth in a low, wide stance, her long hair flying.

So much happens in this work, not all of which feels essential or justifies the intermissionless length. A mock rehearsal of “The Taming of the Shrew” devolves into a fight scene that further warps into an over-the-top tango. GoGwilt destroys his violin, stamping it to pieces; dialogue and song, some of it in French, entwine with visceral, high-velocity movement (choreographed by Smith and the performers).

Amid this fragmentation — and lots of great dancing not always matched by great acting — Smith’s conviction is a steadying force. In one solo, she repeatedly raises her palms, then gently strikes her face, as if caught in a loop of self-punishment. However tortured, her character also seems like a source of support. When the marvelous Mouna Soualem cycles through lustful, combative encounters with two men, it’s Smith who tends to her, as if coaching a fighter midmatch, and catches her when she is left alone, deflated. A final, simple song, sung by Vinson Fraley, puts these relationships in perspective, relative to the vastness of time.

Given Smith’s international profile and devoted following — stemming from her decade as a star with the Batsheva Dance Company — “Broken Theater” may be the festival’s most high-profile work. But other programs were just as memorable. The weekend before, in the more intimate Club at La MaMa next door, Loco7 Dance Puppet Theater Company offered a different kind of family portrait, “Lunch With Sonia,” directed and written by Federico Restrepo and Denise Greber. This earnest and homespun production draws from Restrepo’s experience with his aunt, who decided to end her life through assisted death after a long illness. The Loco7 ensemble animated the story with heart, whimsy and care for the ethical dilemmas surrounding such a choice.

In the Ellen Stewart Theater, a split bill featured works by Leyya Mona Tawil (also known as Lime Rickey International) and the duo Nora Alami and Jadd Tank, presented with the New York Arab Festival. Wearing a blonde wig that changed colors with the light, Lime Rickey — a Palestinian, Syrian and American artist — charged the space with her enigmatic presence, inserting dabke footwork between rumbling, jagged sonic eruptions that she generated live.

In “3rd body,” Alami and Tank shared impromptu snippets of research flowing from questions about their Moroccan-American and Lebanese-American identities, finding playful ways into discussions of otherness and belonging. While still settling into their onstage partnership, they found their groove in a talking-and-gesturing sequence that replicated a conversation between two A. I. bots about becoming human.

In the basement theater on Sunday, the choreographer and stunning dancer Kayla Farrish offered what she described as a draft of her newest work, “Put Away the Fire, dear, pt. 2,” which asks, “What’s at the end of an archetype?” The archetypes in question are primarily embodied by Black artists and entertainers in American cinema, whom she conjures and contests through movement, music and dialogue, along with four other ardent performers.

Set in what looks like a disheveled living room, the work is as brimming with ideas as the stage is with furniture, books, film reels and suitcases. The space that La MaMa gives to work out these ideas, with an audience, is an important part of the process. And Farrish clearly has the drive, vision and skills to bring it to the next level — most of all, her own power as a performer.

La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival

Through Sunday at La MaMa, Manhattan; lamama.org.

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Muere a los 96 años Harry Belafonte, cantante, activista radical y animador con un “corazón rebelde”

Sol Amaya

(CNN) — Harry Belafonte, el apuesto cantante, actor y activista que se convirtió en un partidario indispensable del movimiento por los derechos civiles, murió, dijo su publicista Ken Sunshine a CNN.

Tenía 96 años. Belafonte murió este martes por la mañana de insuficiencia cardíaca congestiva, dijo Sunshine.

Belafonte fue apodado el “Rey del Calypso” después del éxito revolucionario de su éxito de 1956, “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)”. También se convirtió en una estrella de cine después de actuar en la adaptación cinematográfica del musical de Broadway, “Carmen Jones”.

Pero las mayores contribuciones de Belafonte tuvieron lugar fuera del escenario. Fue un estratega clave, recaudador de fondos y mediador del movimiento de derechos civiles. Arriesgó continuamente su carrera en el entretenimiento, y al menos una vez su vida, por su activismo. Se hizo amigo cercano del reverendo Martin Luther King Jr., quien a menudo se retiraba al apartamento palaciego de Belafonte en Nueva York para hablar de estrategia o escapar de las presiones de liderar el movimiento de derechos civiles.

Un lector voraz con un ardiente desdén por la injusticia, la conciencia política de Belafonte fue moldeada por la experiencia de crecer como el hijo empobrecido de una madre jamaicana pobre que trabajaba como empleada doméstica.

“A menudo respondo consultas que me preguntan: ‘¿Cuándo, como artista, decidiste convertirte en activista?’”, dijo una vez. “Mi respuesta a la pregunta es que fui activista mucho antes de convertirme en artista. Ambos se sirven mutuamente, pero el activismo es lo primero”.

El alcance del activismo de Belafonte fue asombroso. Vio el movimiento por los derechos civiles como una lucha global. Dirigió una campaña contra el apartheid en Sudáfrica y se hizo amigo de Nelson Mandela. Movilizó apoyo para la lucha contra el VIH/SIDA y se convirtió en Embajador de Buena Voluntad de UNICEF. También se le ocurrió la idea de grabar la exitosa canción de 1985, “We Are the World”, que reunió a una constelación de estrellas del pop y el rock, incluidos Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson y Bruce Springsteen, para recaudar dinero para aliviar la hambruna en África.

Belafonte no se suavizó a medida que crecía su riqueza y fama. Recibió críticas después de llamar al presidente George W. Bush “el mayor terrorista del mundo” por liderar una invasión de Irak, y atacó a celebridades negras como Jay Z y Beyonce por no tomar posiciones más audaces sobre la justicia social. Criticó tanto a Barack Obama durante la primera candidatura presidencial del entonces senador en 2008 que Obama le preguntó: “¿Cuándo me vas a dar un respiro?”.

“¿Qué te hace pensar que eso no es lo que he estado haciendo?” respondió Belafonte.

Héroe y mentor de Belafonte

Harold George Belafonte Jr. nació el 1 de marzo de 1927 en la ciudad de Nueva York de inmigrantes caribeños pobres. Su padre trabajaba como cocinero en barcos mercantes y abandonó a la familia cuando Belafonte era joven. Belafonte también pasó parte de su niñez en Jamaica, la antigua colonia británica y el país natal de su madre, donde fue testigo de cómo las autoridades inglesas blancas maltrataban a los jamaiquinos negros. Regresó al barrio de Harlem de la ciudad de Nueva York en 1940 para vivir con su madre, Melvine, quien luchaba por mantener unida a su familia en medio de la pobreza extrema.

“Ella fue quien le enseñó que no se debe dejar que se ponga el sol sin luchar contra la injusticia”, dice sobre la madre de Belafonte Judith E. Smith, autora de “Becoming Belafonte: Black Artist, Public Radical”.

Belafonte tuvo una infancia tumultuosa y muchas veces tuvo que valerse por sí mismo.

“El momento más difícil de mi vida fue cuando era niño”, le dijo a un entrevistador de una revista. “Mi mamá me dio cariño, pero, como me quedé solo, también mucha angustia”.

Belafonte abandonó la escuela secundaria y se alistó en la Marina de EE.UU. en 1944. Fue relegado al trabajo manual en el barco y no entró en combate, pero la experiencia resultó ser profunda. Conoció a hombres negros con educación universitaria que le dieron una exposición más amplia al mundo, hablándole sobre grandes temas como la segregación y el colonialismo. La experiencia de luchar contra el fascismo en el extranjero mientras volvía a la segregación en casa enfureció a Belafonte, al igual que a muchos veteranos negros de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Llegó al campo del entretenimiento casi por accidente. Belafonte trabajaba como conserje en Nueva York cuando asistió a una obra en el American Negro Theatre. Estaba tan entusiasmado con la actuación que decidió convertirse en actor.

Eventualmente estudió actuación en un taller al que asistieron compañeros como Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis y Bea Arthur. También comenzó a cantar en clubes nocturnos, una vez en una banda que incluía a los grandes del jazz Charlie Parker y Max Roach, y consiguió un contrato de grabación en 1949.

Belafonte tenía carisma natural, en el escenario y detrás del micrófono. Ganó un premio Tony por su actuación en Broadway y fue el primer afroamericano en ganar un premio Emmy por su programa de variedades de 1959.

Belafonte también buscó la manera de fusionar su activismo con su carrera y encontró un mentor y amigo en Paul Robeson. El actor negro de teatro y cine fue un hombre del renacimiento, un atleta estrella e intelectual educado en la Ivy League que se convirtió en un abierto activista de los derechos civiles y en un crítico de la política exterior de Estados Unidos. Robeson finalmente fue incluido en la lista negra por su activismo durante la era McCarthy.

Belafonte llamó a Robeson parte de su “brújula moral”.

“Para mí, el Sr. Robeson era el gorrión. Fue un artista que hizo que aquellos de nosotros en las artes comprendiéramos la profundidad de ese llamado, cuando dijo: “Los artistas son los guardianes de la verdad. Somos la voz radical de la civilización”.

Su amistad con MLK

Belafonte también construyó una amistad con King, otro poderoso líder negro. King volaba a menudo a la ciudad de Nueva York para recaudar fondos para el movimiento y reunirse con asesores clave. Durante un viaje, llamó a Belafonte y lo saludó con: “Nunca nos hemos visto, así que es posible que no sepas quién soy”.

Los dos hombres se conocieron en una iglesia de Nueva York donde King estaba hablando y se retiraron después del evento a una habitación del sótano para hablar.

“Éramos solo nosotros en una mesa de juego con sillas de respaldo recto”, recordó Belafonte. “Lo que se suponía que serían unos minutos se convirtió en casi cuatro horas. Me gustó su valentía, sus pensamientos, sus ideas y su misión. Me comprometí con él después de eso”.

La relación de Belafonte con King resultaría crucial. Belafonte tenía el poder de las estrellas, conexiones y, lo que es más importante, la voluntad de arriesgarlo todo para ayudar al movimiento de derechos civiles. Recaudó dinero para la Conferencia de Liderazgo Cristiano del Sur, la organización que King cofundó y dirigió. Belafonte también ayudó a rescatar a activistas que habían sido encarcelados durante campañas de derechos civiles y ayudó a organizar la Marcha de 1963 en Washington.

Arriesgó más que su carrera por momentos. En 1964, Belafonte y su amigo y compañero actor Sidney Poitier viajaron a Mississippi para entregar una bolsa de médico llena de US$ 70.000 para apoyar los esfuerzos de registro de votantes. Belafonte dice que el Ku Klux Klan los persiguió y les disparó, pero finalmente lograron entregar su dinero en mano.

Belafonte también brindó una ayuda crucial a la familia de King. Pagó por amas de casa y niñeras mientras King viajaba por el país. Y contrató una póliza de seguro de vida para el líder de los derechos civiles que se convirtió en una de las principales fuentes de apoyo financiero de la familia después del asesinato de King.

“Cada vez que nos metíamos en problemas o cuando ocurría una tragedia, Harry siempre acudía en nuestra ayuda, con su generoso corazón abierto de par en par”, dijo más tarde Coretta Scott King en sus memorias.

Belafonte también se convirtió en uno de los amigos más confiables de King. King a menudo se alojaba en el apartamento del Upper West Side de Belafonte, y escribió el resumen de uno de sus discursos más famosos, su discurso de 1967 denunciando la guerra de Vietnam, en la casa de Belafonte.

King era un hombre reservado en público que rara vez bajaba la guardia. Pero en raras fotos que capturan a King mostrando una gran sonrisa desinhibida, Belafonte a menudo está a su lado, abrazándolo y compartiendo alguna broma privada. Hay un maravilloso clip de YouTube que muestra a King contándole una broma a Belafonte cuando el animador se convirtió en presentador de “The Tonight Show”.

Sin embargo, Belafonte brindó más que apoyo emocional a King. King confiaba en él para obtener consejos y estrategias, dice Miller, autor de “Becoming Belafonte”.

“Él (Belafonte) ya era un radical y ya estaba pensando en cómo debería desarrollarse la liberación negra”, dice Miller. “Él ya había estado en estos grupos donde todo el mundo hablaba de, ¿qué debes hacer para organizarte? ¿Cómo haces el cambio?

Belafonte en sus últimos años

Ser radical era esencial para cómo Belafonte se definía a sí mismo. A medida que crecía, su sedosa voz de canto se redujo a un grave susurro y caminaba con un bastón. Pero nunca perdió su aspecto de estrella de cine ni su hambre de cambio radical. En 2013, recibió el mayor honor de la NAACP, la Medalla Spingarn. Dijo durante su discurso de aceptación que lo que faltaba en la lucha contemporánea por la libertad es “pensamiento radical”.

“Estados Unidos nunca se ha sentido impulsado a perfeccionar nuestro deseo de una mayor democracia sin que el pensamiento radical y las voces radicales estén al frente de tal búsqueda”, dijo.

Belafonte también recibió un Kennedy Center Honor en 1989, la Medalla Nacional de las Artes en 1994 y un premio Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award en 2000. También se convirtió en mentor de otros artistas, tal como Robeson lo había inspirado años antes.

Habló con orgullo sobre las protestas raciales que se extendieron por EE.UU. en el verano de 2020 después de la muerte de George Floyd y escribió que “nunca hemos tenido tantos aliados blancos, gimiendo para estar juntos por la libertad, por el honor, por una justicia. que nos libere a todos al final…”

Un grupo de estudiantes negros se acercó a Belafonte en Harlem en 2016 y le preguntaron si aún estaba buscando algo, a pesar de su avanzada edad.

“Lo que siempre he estado buscando: ¿Dónde reside el corazón rebelde?” respondió Belafonte. “Sin el corazón rebelde, sin personas que entiendan que no hay sacrificio que podamos hacer que sea demasiado grande para recuperar lo que hemos perdido, estaremos siempre distraídos con posesiones, baratijas y títulos”.

Belafonte nunca perdió su corazón rebelde. Bendecido con apariencia, riqueza y fama, podría haberse contentado con ser el Rey de Calypso. Pero tomó otra decisión. Hizo sus mayores contribuciones fuera del escenario.

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Harry Belafonte, radical activist and entertainer with a ‘rebel heart,’ dies at 96

Harry Belafonte, the dashing singer, actor and activist who became an indispensable supporter of the civil rights movement, has died, his publicist Ken Sunshine told CNN.He was 96.Belafonte died Tuesday morning of congestive heart failure, Sunshine said.Belafonte was dubbed the “King of Calypso” after the groundbreaking success of his 1956 hit, “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O).” He also became a movie star after acting in the film adaption of the Broadway musical, “Carmen Jones.”But Belafonte biggest contributions took place offstage. He was a key strategist, fundraiser and mediator for the civil rights movement. He continually risked his entertainment career – and at least once his life – for his activism. He became a close friend of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who often retired to Belafonte’s palatial New York apartment to talk strategy or escape the pressures of leading the civil rights movement.A voracious reader with a burning disdain for injustice, Belafonte’s political consciousness was shaped by the experience of growing up as the impoverished son of a poor Jamaican mother who worked as a domestic servant.”I’ve often responded to queries that ask, ‘When as an artist did you decide to become an activist?’ ” he once said. “My response to the question is that I was an activist long before I became an artist. They both service each other, but the activism is first.”The scope of Belafonte’s activism was astonishing. He saw the civil rights movement as a global struggle. He led a campaign against apartheid in South Africa, and befriended Nelson Mandela. He mobilized support for the fight against HIV/AIDS and became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He also came up with the idea for recording the 1985 hit song, “We Are the World,” which assembled a constellation of pop and rock stars, including Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen, to raise money for famine relief in Africa.Belafonte didn’t mellow as his wealth and fame grew. He drew criticism after calling President George W. Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world” for leading an invasion of Iraq, and assailed Black celebrities such as Jay Z and Beyonce for not taking bolder stands on social justice. He criticized Barack Obama so much during the then Senator’s first presidential run in 2008 that Obama asked him, “When are you going to cut me some slack?””What make you think that’s not what I’ve been doing?” Belafonte responded.Belafonte’s hero and mentor Harold George Belafonte Jr. was born March 1, 1927, in New York City to poor Caribbean immigrants. His father worked as a cook on merchant ships and abandoned the family when Belafonte was young. Belafonte also spent some of his boyhood in Jamaica, the former British colony and his mother’s native country, where he witnessed White English authorities mistreating Black Jamaicans. He returned to New York City’s Harlem neighborhood by 1940 to live with his mother, Melvine, who struggled to hold her family together amid grinding poverty.”She was the one who taught him that you shouldn’t let the sun go down without fighting against injustice,” Judith E. Smith, author of “Becoming Belafonte: Black Artist, Public Radical,” says about Belafonte’s mother.Belafonte had a tumultuous childhood and often had to fend for himself.”The most difficult time in my life was when I was a kid,” he told a magazine interviewer. “My mother gave me affection, but, because I was left on my own, also a lot of anguish.”Belafonte dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1944. He was relegated to manual labor on the ship and didn’t see combat, but the experience proved to be profound. He met college educated Black men who gave him a wider exposure to the world, talking to him about big issues such as segregation and colonialism. The experience of fighting against fascism abroad while coming back to segregation at home angered Belafonte, much like many Black veterans from World War II.He drifted into the entertainment field almost by accident. Belafonte was working as a janitor in New York when he attended a play at the American Negro Theater. He was so swept up by the performance that he decided to become an actor.Video above from 2022: Harry Belafonte’s famous friends celebrate his 95th birthdayHe eventually studied acting at a workshop attended by classmates such as Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis and Bea Arthur. He also fell into singing in nightclubs – once in a band that included jazz greats Charlie Parker and Max Roach – and landed a recording contract in 1949.Belafonte had natural charisma, on stage and behind the microphone. He won a Tony Award for his acting on Broadway and was the first African American to win an Emmy award for his 1959 variety show.Belafonte also looked for a way to merge his activism with his career and found a mentor and friend in Paul Robeson. The Black stage and film actor was a renaissance man, a star athlete and Ivy League-educated intellectual who became an outspoken civil rights activist and a critic of US foreign policy. Robeson was eventually blacklisted for his activism during the McCarthy era.Belafonte called Robeson part of his “moral compass.””For me, Mr. Robeson was the sparrow. He was an artist who made those of us in the arts understand the depth of that calling, when he said, “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.”His friendship with MLK Belafonte also built a friendship with King, another powerful Black leader. King often flew to New York City to raise money for the movement and to meet key advisors. During one trip, he called Belafonte, greeting him with, “We’ve never met, so you may not know who I am.”The two men met at a New York church where King was speaking and retired after the event to a basement room to talk.”It was just us at a card table with straight-back chairs,” Belafonte recalled. “What was supposed to be a few minutes led to almost four hours. I liked his courage, his thoughts, his ideas and his mission. I committed to him after that.”Belafonte’s relationship with King would prove to be crucial. Belafonte had star power, connections, and more importantly, a willingness to risk all to help the civil rights movement. He raised money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization that King co-founded and led. Belafonte also helped bail out activists who had been jailed during civil rights campaigns, and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington.He risked more than his career at times. In 1964, Belafonte and his friend and fellow actor Sidney Poitier traveled to Mississippi to deliver a doctor’s bag filled with $70,000 to support voter registration efforts. Belafonte says the pair were chased and shot at by the Ku Klux Klan but eventually succeeded in hand-delivering their money.Belafonte delivered crucial help to King’s family as well. He paid for housekeepers and babysitters while King traveled the country. And he took out a life insurance policy for the civil rights leader that became one of the family’s primary sources of financial support after King’s assassination.”Whenever we got into trouble or when tragedy struck, Harry has always come to our aid, his generous heart wide open,” Coretta Scott King later said in her memoir.Belafonte also became one of King’s most trusted friends. King often stayed in Belafonte’s Upper West Side apartment, and he wrote the outline to one of his most famous speeches — his 1967 address denouncing the Vietnam War — in Belafonte’s home.King was a self-contained man in public who rarely let his guard down. But in rare photos that capture King breaking into a huge, uninhibited grin, Belafonte is often at his side, hugging him and sharing some private joke. There is a marvelous YouTube clip showing King telling a joke to Belafonte when the entertainer filled in as a host on “The Tonight Show.”Belafonte provided more than emotional support to King, though. King relied on him for advice and strategy, says Miller, author of “Becoming Belafonte.””He (Belafonte) was already a radical and already thinking about how Black liberation should unfold,” Miller says. “He had already been in these groups where everybody was talking about, what should you to do to organize? How do you make change?”Belafonte in his later years Being a radical was essential to how Belafonte defined himself. As he got older, his silky singing voice lowered to a gravely whisper and he walked with a cane. But he never lost his movie-star looks or his hunger for radical change. In 2013, he was awarded the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal. He said during his acceptance speech that what was missing from the contemporary struggle for freedom is “radical thought.””America has never been moved to perfect our desire for greater democracy without radical thinking and radical voices being at the helm of any such quest,” he said.Belafonte also was a recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor in 1989, the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He also became a mentor to other artists, just as Robeson had inspired him years before.He spoke with pride about the racial protests that spread across the US in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd, writing that “we have never had so many White allies, wailing to stand together for freedom, for honor, for a justice that free us all in the end…”A group of Black students approached Belafonte in Harlem in 2016 and asked if there was anything he was still looking for, despite his advanced age.”What I’ve always been looking for: Where resides the rebel heart?” Belafonte replied. “Without the rebellious heart, without people who understand that there’s no sacrifice we can make that is too great to retrieve that which we’ve lost, we will forever be distracted with possessions and trinkets and title.”Belafonte never lost his rebellious heart. Blessed with looks, wealth and fame, he could have been content with being the King of Calypso. But he made another choice. His made his biggest contributions offstage.

Harry Belafonte, the dashing singer, actor and activist who became an indispensable supporter of the civil rights movement, has died, his publicist Ken Sunshine told CNN.

He was 96.

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Belafonte died Tuesday morning of congestive heart failure, Sunshine said.

Belafonte was dubbed the “King of Calypso” after the groundbreaking success of his 1956 hit, “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O).” He also became a movie star after acting in the film adaption of the Broadway musical, “Carmen Jones.”

But Belafonte biggest contributions took place offstage. He was a key strategist, fundraiser and mediator for the civil rights movement. He continually risked his entertainment career – and at least once his life – for his activism. He became a close friend of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who often retired to Belafonte’s palatial New York apartment to talk strategy or escape the pressures of leading the civil rights movement.

A voracious reader with a burning disdain for injustice, Belafonte’s political consciousness was shaped by the experience of growing up as the impoverished son of a poor Jamaican mother who worked as a domestic servant.

“I’ve often responded to queries that ask, ‘When as an artist did you decide to become an activist?’ ” he once said. “My response to the question is that I was an activist long before I became an artist. They both service each other, but the activism is first.”

The scope of Belafonte’s activism was astonishing. He saw the civil rights movement as a global struggle. He led a campaign against apartheid in South Africa, and befriended Nelson Mandela. He mobilized support for the fight against HIV/AIDS and became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He also came up with the idea for recording the 1985 hit song, “We Are the World,” which assembled a constellation of pop and rock stars, including Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen, to raise money for famine relief in Africa.

Portrait of Harry Belafonte, actor and singer.

Bettmann

Portrait of Harry Belafonte, actor and singer.

Belafonte didn’t mellow as his wealth and fame grew. He drew criticism after calling President George W. Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world” for leading an invasion of Iraq, and assailed Black celebrities such as Jay Z and Beyonce for not taking bolder stands on social justice. He criticized Barack Obama so much during the then Senator’s first presidential run in 2008 that Obama asked him, “When are you going to cut me some slack?”

“What make you think that’s not what I’ve been doing?” Belafonte responded.

Belafonte’s hero and mentor

Harold George Belafonte Jr. was born March 1, 1927, in New York City to poor Caribbean immigrants. His father worked as a cook on merchant ships and abandoned the family when Belafonte was young. Belafonte also spent some of his boyhood in Jamaica, the former British colony and his mother’s native country, where he witnessed White English authorities mistreating Black Jamaicans. He returned to New York City’s Harlem neighborhood by 1940 to live with his mother, Melvine, who struggled to hold her family together amid grinding poverty.

“She was the one who taught him that you shouldn’t let the sun go down without fighting against injustice,” Judith E. Smith, author of “Becoming Belafonte: Black Artist, Public Radical,” says about Belafonte’s mother.

Belafonte had a tumultuous childhood and often had to fend for himself.

“The most difficult time in my life was when I was a kid,” he told a magazine interviewer. “My mother gave me affection, but, because I was left on my own, also a lot of anguish.”

Belafonte dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1944. He was relegated to manual labor on the ship and didn’t see combat, but the experience proved to be profound. He met college educated Black men who gave him a wider exposure to the world, talking to him about big issues such as segregation and colonialism. The experience of fighting against fascism abroad while coming back to segregation at home angered Belafonte, much like many Black veterans from World War II.

He drifted into the entertainment field almost by accident. Belafonte was working as a janitor in New York when he attended a play at the American Negro Theater. He was so swept up by the performance that he decided to become an actor.

Video above from 2022: Harry Belafonte’s famous friends celebrate his 95th birthday

He eventually studied acting at a workshop attended by classmates such as Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis and Bea Arthur. He also fell into singing in nightclubs – once in a band that included jazz greats Charlie Parker and Max Roach – and landed a recording contract in 1949.

Belafonte had natural charisma, on stage and behind the microphone. He won a Tony Award for his acting on Broadway and was the first African American to win an Emmy award for his 1959 variety show.

Belafonte also looked for a way to merge his activism with his career and found a mentor and friend in Paul Robeson. The Black stage and film actor was a renaissance man, a star athlete and Ivy League-educated intellectual who became an outspoken civil rights activist and a critic of US foreign policy. Robeson was eventually blacklisted for his activism during the McCarthy era.

Belafonte called Robeson part of his “moral compass.”

“For me, Mr. Robeson was the sparrow. He was an artist who made those of us in the arts understand the depth of that calling, when he said, “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.”

His friendship with MLK

Belafonte also built a friendship with King, another powerful Black leader. King often flew to New York City to raise money for the movement and to meet key advisors. During one trip, he called Belafonte, greeting him with, “We’ve never met, so you may not know who I am.”

The two men met at a New York church where King was speaking and retired after the event to a basement room to talk.

“It was just us at a card table with straight-back chairs,” Belafonte recalled. “What was supposed to be a few minutes led to almost four hours. I liked his courage, his thoughts, his ideas and his mission. I committed to him after that.”

Belafonte’s relationship with King would prove to be crucial. Belafonte had star power, connections, and more importantly, a willingness to risk all to help the civil rights movement. He raised money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization that King co-founded and led. Belafonte also helped bail out activists who had been jailed during civil rights campaigns, and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington.

He risked more than his career at times. In 1964, Belafonte and his friend and fellow actor Sidney Poitier traveled to Mississippi to deliver a doctor’s bag filled with $70,000 to support voter registration efforts. Belafonte says the pair were chased and shot at by the Ku Klux Klan but eventually succeeded in hand-delivering their money.

Belafonte delivered crucial help to King’s family as well. He paid for housekeepers and babysitters while King traveled the country. And he took out a life insurance policy for the civil rights leader that became one of the family’s primary sources of financial support after King’s assassination.

“Whenever we got into trouble or when tragedy struck, Harry has always come to our aid, his generous heart wide open,” Coretta Scott King later said in her memoir.

Belafonte also became one of King’s most trusted friends. King often stayed in Belafonte’s Upper West Side apartment, and he wrote the outline to one of his most famous speeches — his 1967 address denouncing the Vietnam War — in Belafonte’s home.

King was a self-contained man in public who rarely let his guard down. But in rare photos that capture King breaking into a huge, uninhibited grin, Belafonte is often at his side, hugging him and sharing some private joke. There is a marvelous YouTube clip showing King telling a joke to Belafonte when the entertainer filled in as a host on “The Tonight Show.”

Belafonte provided more than emotional support to King, though. King relied on him for advice and strategy, says Miller, author of “Becoming Belafonte.”

“He (Belafonte) was already a radical and already thinking about how Black liberation should unfold,” Miller says. “He had already been in these groups where everybody was talking about, what should you to do to organize? How do you make change?”

Belafonte in his later years

Being a radical was essential to how Belafonte defined himself. As he got older, his silky singing voice lowered to a gravely whisper and he walked with a cane. But he never lost his movie-star looks or his hunger for radical change. In 2013, he was awarded the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal. He said during his acceptance speech that what was missing from the contemporary struggle for freedom is “radical thought.”

“America has never been moved to perfect our desire for greater democracy without radical thinking and radical voices being at the helm of any such quest,” he said.

Harry Belafonte

getty

Harry Belafonte

Belafonte also was a recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor in 1989, the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He also became a mentor to other artists, just as Robeson had inspired him years before.

He spoke with pride about the racial protests that spread across the US in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd, writing that “we have never had so many White allies, wailing to stand together for freedom, for honor, for a justice that free us all in the end…”

A group of Black students approached Belafonte in Harlem in 2016 and asked if there was anything he was still looking for, despite his advanced age.

“What I’ve always been looking for: Where resides the rebel heart?” Belafonte replied. “Without the rebellious heart, without people who understand that there’s no sacrifice we can make that is too great to retrieve that which we’ve lost, we will forever be distracted with possessions and trinkets and title.”

Belafonte never lost his rebellious heart. Blessed with looks, wealth and fame, he could have been content with being the King of Calypso. But he made another choice. His made his biggest contributions offstage.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Harry Belafonte, singer and activist dies, at 96

In this file photo taken on October 26, 1976, US singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte speaks in Paris. - Belafonte, the superstar entertainer who introduced a Caribbean flair to mainstream US music and became well known for his deep personal investment in civil rights, died Pail 25, 2023, in Manhattan.
Harry Belafonte Image Credit: AFP

Harry Belafonte, the civil rights and entertainment giant who began as a groundbreaking actor and singer and became an activist, humanitarian and conscience of the world, has died. He was 96.

Belafonte died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his New York home, his wife Pamela by his side, said Paula M. Witt, of public relations firm Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis.

Harry Belafonte with his son, David, and second wife, Julie, in 1958.
Harry Belafonte with his son, David, and second wife, Julie, in 1958. Image Credit: Washington Post

Belafonte was married three times. He and his first wife Marguerite Byrd had two children, including actress-model Shari Belafonte. He also had two children with second wife Julia Robinson, a former dancer.

With his glowing, handsome face and silky-husky voice, Belafonte was one of the first Black performers to gain a wide following on film and to sell a million records as a singer; many still know him for his signature hit “Banana Boat Song (Day-O),” and its call of “Day-O! Daaaaay-O.” But he forged a greater legacy once he scaled back his performing career in the 1960s and lived out his hero Paul Robeson’s decree that artists are “gatekeepers of truth.”

 In this file photo taken on December 06, 2014, US singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte holds his Golden Heart award for his social commitment during the charity gala
In this file photo taken on December 06, 2014, US singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte holds his Golden Heart award for his social commitment during the charity gala “Ein Herz fuer Kinder” (A Heart for Children) in Berlin. Image Credit: AFP

He stands as the model and the epitome of the celebrity activist. Few kept up with Belafonte’s time and commitment and none his stature as a meeting point among Hollywood, Washington and the civil rights movement.

Belafonte not only participated in protest marches and benefit concerts, but helped organize and raise support for them. He worked closely with his friend and generational peer the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., often intervening on his behalf with both politicians and fellow entertainers and helping him financially. He risked his life and livelihood and set high standards for younger Black celebrities, scolding Jay Z and Beyonce for failing to meet their “social responsibilities,” and mentoring Usher, Common, Danny Glover and many others. In Spike Lee’s 2018 film “BlacKkKlansman,” he was fittingly cast as an elder statesman schooling young activists about the country’s past.

Harry Belafonte (C) laughs with a fellow audience member as they depart after a reception for the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors recipients at the White House in Washington, December 8, 2013.
Harry Belafonte (C) laughs with a fellow audience member as they depart after a reception for the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors recipients at the White House in Washington, December 8, 2013. Image Credit: Reuters

Belafonte’s friend, civil rights leader Andrew Young, would note that Belafonte was the rare person to grow more radical with age. He was ever engaged and unyielding, willing to take on Southern segregationists, Northern liberals, the billionaire Koch brothers and the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, whom Belafonte would remember asking to cut him “some slack.”

Belafonte responded, “What makes you think that’s not what I’ve been doing?”

Harry Belafonte demonstrates during the Free South Africa Movement in 1984.
Harry Belafonte demonstrates during the Free South Africa Movement in 1984. Image Credit: Washington Post

Belafonte had been a major artist since the 1950s. He won a Tony Award in 1954 for his starring role in John Murray Anderson’s “Almanac” and five years later became the first Black performer to win an Emmy for the TV special “Tonight with Harry Belafonte.”

He also won Grammy Awards in 1960 and 1965 and received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2000 but voiced frustration at the limits on Black artists in show business. In 1994, Belafonte was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Harry Belafonte signs autographs for well-wishers in 1979.
Harry Belafonte signs autographs for well-wishers in 1979. Image Credit: Washington Post

In 1954, he co-starred with Dorothy Dandridge in the Otto Preminger-directed musical “Carmen Jones,” a popular breakthrough for an all-Black cast. The 1957 movie “Island in the Sun” was banned in several Southern cities, where theater owners were threatened by the Ku Klux Klan because of the film’s interracial romance between Belafonte and Joan Fontaine.

In the 1960s he campaigned with King, and in the 1980s, he worked to end apartheid in South Africa and coordinated Nelson Mandela’s first visit to the United States.

‘WE ARE THE WORLD’ Belafonte traveled the world as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, in 1987 and later started an AIDS foundation. In 2014 he received an Academy Award for his humanitarian work.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela (L) is escorted back to his seat by Harry Belafonte the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Children in New York, May 9, 2002.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela (L) is escorted back to his seat by Harry Belafonte the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Children in New York, May 9, 2002. Image Credit: Reuters

Belafonte provided the impetus for “We Are the World,” the 1985 all-star musical collaboration that raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia. After seeing a grim news report on the famine, he wanted to do something similar to the fund-raising song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by the British supergroup Band Aid a year earlier.

“We Are the World” featured superstars such as Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles and Diana Ross and raised millions of dollars.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

The Iconic Harry Belafonte Has Died

The Iconic Harry Belafonte Has Died

Harry Belafonte, the iconic American singer, actor, and civil rights activist, passed away from congestive heart failure at the age of 96. Belafonte was born on March 1, 1927, in Harlem, New York City, and rose to prominence in the 1950s and 60s as one of the most successful and influential artists of his time.

Belafonte’s music career spanned more than six decades and included numerous hit songs, such as “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” “Jamaica Farewell,” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” He also acted in several films, including the classic musical “Carmen Jones” and the Academy Award-winning drama “The Defiant Ones.” But it was his activism that truly defined Belafonte’s legacy.

Belafonte was a passionate advocate for civil rights and social justice, and he used his platform as a celebrity to support numerous causes throughout his life. He marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, helping to organize the historic March on Washington in 1963. He was also a vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa and a supporter of the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War.

In addition to his activism, Belafonte was a trailblazer in the entertainment industry, breaking down barriers for black artists and paving the way for future generations. He was the first African American to win an Emmy award, and he also received a Tony award and multiple Grammy awards throughout his career.

Belafonte’s impact on music, film, and activism is immeasurable, and he will be deeply missed by his family, friends, and fans around the world. His legacy will continue to inspire generations to come, reminding us all of the power of music and the importance of fighting for justice and equality.

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Singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte dies aged 96

Harry Belafonte, the iconic Caribbean-American singer-turned-political-activist has died at the age of 96.

Born Harold George Bellanfanti in New York City, Belafonte spent his early childhood in his family’s native Jamaica.

Having served in the US Navy during WWII, Belafonte worked as a janitor and a stagehand before finding fame on stage and screen.

He came to be known as the ‘King of Calypso’ early in his career. His third album, Calypso, became the first by a single performer to sell more than one million copies.

Belafonte was at the forefront of cultural and societal change in the US.

He was the first black person allowed to perform in many plush nightspots and also had racial breakthroughs in movies at a time when segregation prevailed in much of the United States.

In Island in the Sun in 1957, his character entertained notions of a relationship with a white woman played by Joan Fontaine, which reportedly triggered threats to burn down theatres in the American South.

In 1959’s Odds Against Tomorrow, Belafonte played a bank robber with a racist partner.

He would later move on to work with his friend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr during the US civil rights movement in the early 1960s.

Harry Belafonte and Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, pictured in New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport in August 1964

Belafonte became the driving force behind the celebrity-studded, famine-fighting hit song We Are the World in the 1980s.

He worked to end apartheid in South Africa and coordinated Nelson Mandela’s first visit to the United States.

Belafonte also travelled the world as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and later started an AIDS foundation.

He once said he was in a constant state of rebellion that was driven by anger.

“I’ve got to be a part of whatever the rebellion is that tries to change all this,” he told the New York Times in 2001. “The anger is a necessary fuel. Rebellion is healthy.”

A Tony Award winner for his performance in Almanac on Broadway in 1954, Belafonte went on to become the first black performer to win a major Emmy in 1960 with his appearance on a television variety special.

Belafonte also won Grammy Awards in 1960 and 1965.

In 1994, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts in the US.

Belafonte received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2000 but voiced frustration at the limits on black artists in showbusiness.

In 2014, he received an Academy Award for his humanitarian work.

Harry Belafonte, pictured in New York in November 2016

Even in his late 80s, Belafonte was still speaking out on race and income equality and urging President Barack Obama to do more to help the poor. He was a co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington held the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president in January 2017.

His final film role was in 2018’s Oscar-winning BlacKkKlansman.

Belafonte credited his mother Melvine for instilling the activist spirit in him.

“A lot of people say to me, ‘When as an artist did you decide to become an activist?'” he said in a National Public Radio interview in the US in 2011.

“I say to them, ‘I was long an activist before I became an artist’.”

Belafonte was married three times. He and his first wife Marguerite Byrd had two children, including the actress and model Shari Belafonte.

He also had two children with his second wife Julia Robinson, a former dancer.

Source: Reuters

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