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harry belafonte
What I Learned About Justice From My First Boss Out of College, Harry Belafonte
Mr. B. set an example by staying true to his convictions, building community and bridges across cultures, and remaining tenacious while battling economic and racial inequality.
May 04, 2023
Some know the late Harry Belafonte for his genre-jumping music and silky baritone voice, epitomized in his classic 1956 album Calypso. Others swoon over his performances in films like the 1954 musical Carmen Jones.
In activist circles, he’s revered for supporting his good friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement, funding voter registration drives in Mississippi, and financing the Freedom Riders and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), among many other examples.
I knew him for something else besides: He was my first boss after college.
In 2005, I worked for Harry Belafonte as his executive assistant in New York. We connected through my mentor-professor Saul Landau, the late writer and filmmaker who befriended “Mr. B” (as he liked to be called) through their travels to Cuba.
I was just beginning my career, knowing only that I was drawn to social justice and the arts. There was no better person to learn about either than from Mr. B — and in no better place than where he once strategized with Dr. King and others in the civil rights movement.
From the moment I started, I took calls and messages for Mr. B not just from those in the music and film industry, but also lawyers, policy advocates, social movement leaders, and poets engaged in ongoing struggles against injustice.
They sought his advice and endorsement, while he focused on empowering the next generation of artists and activists. Even as countless shiny awards lined his office walls, he never rested on his laurels. I saw his humanity — and he challenged my notions of “celebrity.”
Time and again, Mr. B showed that an artist can be more than an entertainer.
During one of my first days on the job, for instance, I dreaded informing him that his friend of 60 years, iconic actor and activist Ossie Davis, had passed away. Very few of us are expected to issue immediate comments to the press after receiving devastating news. Yet amidst his sadness, I remember Mr. B’s strength as he spoke in honor of his friend to the media throughout that long day.
As I now look back at his early life, I have an even greater appreciation for what he overcame. Born to Jamaican immigrants in Harlem in 1927, Mr. B’s early years were heavily influenced by poverty.
In his 2011 memoir, My Song, he chronicled his mother struggling to put food on the table as a domestic worker. His father was a cook aboard United Fruit Company ships and wasn’t always present. Belafonte’s 1956 song “Day-O (Banana Boat Song)” pays tribute to both the toils of his parents and the workers in the banana fields of Jamaica.
After serving in the Navy, Belafonte worked odd jobs to make ends meet in a country still ruled by segregation. His mother’s refrain to fight injustice wherever he saw it laid the foundation for his life and career trajectory. Because of her, he recalled in his memoir, he was an “activist who’d become an artist.”
Against all odds Belafonte rose to stardom, becoming the first Black man to win a Tony, the first Black man to win an Emmy, and the first artist to record an album that sold 1 million copies. And time and again, Mr. B showed that an artist can be more than an entertainer.
He supported the movement against apartheid in South Africa and the campaign to free Nelson Mandela. He organized the all-star charity record “We Are the World” that raised millions for famine relief in Africa. He served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for 36 years, advocating for health care, HIV/AIDS treatment, and free education access for all.
I will always treasure the lessons I learned from Mr. B. He set an example by staying true to his convictions, building community and bridges across cultures, and remaining tenacious while battling economic and racial inequality.
Rest in power, Mr. B. The work continues, guided by your life’s inspiring song.
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Harry Belafonte Never Stopped Fighting for Justice, and Neither Should We
The famous singer used his celebrity to support causes from civil rights to anti-colonialist and anti-war movements and Black Lives Matter.
Apr 29, 2023
On a freezing cold day, February 15th, 2003, Harry Belafonte, the legendary singer, actor, and activist strode onto a stage outside the United Nations in New York City. Rallies against the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq were taking place around the globe that day, in what is believed to be the largest mass protest in human history. Belafonte then did what he had been doing for over half a century–he spoke truth to power:
"We stand for peace. We stand for the truth of what is at the heart of the American people."
Harry Belafonte died this week at the age of 96. Throughout his life, he fought for justice, using his celebrity to support causes from civil rights to anti-colonialist and anti-war movements and Black Lives Matter.
Harry Belafonte never relented. He intensified his fight against South African apartheid and the ravages of U.S. imperialism abroad. He challenged those in power regardless of political party, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
Belafonte continued in that 2003 speech, delivered to several hundred thousand anti-war marchers in New York:
"We were misled by those who created the falseness of the Bay of Tonkin, which falsely led us into a war with Vietnam, a war that we could not and did not win. We lied to the American people about Grenada…about Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, and many places in the world. We stand here today to let those people know that America is a vast and diverse country, and we are part of the greater truth of what makes our nation. Dr. King once said that if mankind does not put an end to war, war will put an end to mankind."
Harry Belafonte was one of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s closest advisors and confidants. He first met King in 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott. Their initial meeting, slated for 20 minutes, lasted four hours.
"At the end of that meeting, I knew that I would be in his service and focus on the cause of the desegregation movement, the right to vote, and all that he stood for," Belafonte said at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011, on the Democracy Now! news hour. "Although we understood how perilous the journey would be, we were not quite prepared for all that we had to confront. I think that it was the most important time in my life."
Thus began a historic friendship that shaped the struggle for desegregation and racial equality. Belafonte knew King like few others. He was loyal to him until the end, when many had abandoned King as his agenda broadened to include fierce opposition to the Vietnam War.
In his memoir, My Song, Belafonte recounts a conversation with King one week before his assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968. King was organizing The Poor People's Campaign, to link and overcome the three evils he saw in our society: racism, militarism, and materialism. As King described the campaign's strategy, he was challenged by Andrew Young, an advisor who would later become the Mayor of Atlanta and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Belafonte recounted King's reply:
"'The trouble,' Martin went on, 'is that we live in a failed system. Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level…That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we're going to have to change the system.'"
Dr. King frequently spoke out against capitalism, but this private moment shared by Belafonte shows the depth of his critique. "At heart, Martin was a socialist and a revolutionary thinker," Belafonte wrote. One week later, King was dead, shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
Harry Belafonte never relented. He intensified his fight against South African apartheid and the ravages of U.S. imperialism abroad. He challenged those in power regardless of political party, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
In 2006, as President George W. Bush's disastrous war in Iraq was still raging, Belafonte traveled to Venezuela and spoke at a mass rally, standing alongside President Hugo Chavez:
"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush, says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people—millions—support your revolution, support your ideas, and, yes, expressing our solidarity with you."
Not long after, Belafonte was disinvited from speaking at the funeral of his dear friend, Coretta Scott King, as President Bush was going to attend.
Belafonte often told the story of his mentor, the singer and activist Paul Robeson, who told him, "Get them to sing your song and they will want to know you." As Harry Belafonte is laid to rest, his message still sings out: We cannot rest.
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Harry Belafonte's Commitment to a Better World Was His Most Beautiful Performance
No other entertainer immersed themselves so deeply in the Civil Rights Movement; no other activist occupied a niche at so many levels of American politics.
Apr 27, 2023
In May 1963, as civil rights demonstrations rocked the city of Birmingham, Alabama, Harry Belafonte was at a cocktail party in Manhattan, scolding the then-attorney general of the United States.
“You may think you’re doing enough,” he recalled telling Robert F. Kennedy, “but you don’t live with us, you don’t even visit our pain.”
Belafonte had many frank and heated conversations with Kennedy. In fact, the singer, actor and activist was on intimate terms with many pivotal figures of the civil rights era.
He was a confidant and adviser to Martin Luther King Jr and allied with Ahmed Sékou Touré, the president of Guinea. He funded the grassroots activists of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as it battled Jim Crow, and he brought a delegation of Hollywood stars to the March on Washington. Along with his best friend and sometimes-rival, actor Sidney Poitier, Belafonte delivered funds to civil rights volunteers in Greenwood, Mississippi, while the Ku Klux Klan watched their every move.
Belafonte, who died on April 25, 2023, at the age of 96, was a unique figure in the history of the Black freedom struggle in the U.S. No other entertainer immersed themselves so deeply in the Civil Rights Movement; no other activist occupied a niche at so many levels of American politics. If he was a powerful voice for justice, it was because he leveraged his celebrity.
A remarkable career
On stage, Belafonte was something to behold, a beacon of charisma. Clad in body-hugging shirts with his chest bare, drawing his audience’s eyes to the looping metal rings at the belt of his tight silk pants, he oozed with seduction. Women swooned.
And he was wildly successful. In 1957, Belafonte sold more records than Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. His repertoire resembled neither Sinatra’s classic pop nor Presley’s up-and-coming rock ‘n’ roll.
The son of West Indian/Carribean immigrants, Belafonte inspired a short-lived craze for calypso music thanks to hits such as “Day O” and “Jamaica Farewell,” and he adapted ethnic folk music for popular consumption – his mainstays included “Hava Nagila,” the Jewish celebration song.
He also starred in Hollywood films such as “Bright Road” (1953) and “Carmen Jones” (1954). “Island in the Sun,” released in 1957, caused a furor. Though Belafonte never kisses his white co-star, Joan Fontaine, on screen, the film explores the theme of interracial romance. The Southern censors banned it.
Belafonte danced around the taboos of race and sex. This exceptionally handsome Black man was charming primarily white audiences, though his light skin color and facial features softened that threat. As a performer, he nudged at racial boundaries without jabbing through them.
“Harry Belafonte stands at the peak of one of the remarkable careers in U.S, entertainment,” proclaimed Time magazine in a 1959 cover feature. He had come a long way from a childhood split between Harlem and Jamaica, from stints in the Navy and as a struggling actor. By then, he was earning about US$750,000 a year, with a lucrative residency at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.
Civil rights activism
That stardom connected Belafonte to Martin Luther King, Jr.
The civil rights leader called him in 1956 during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Soon Belafonte was part of the movement itself. Following King, he embraced nonviolence. As their friendship strengthened, Belafonte realized the crosses that King bore: the burden of leadership, the fear of death.
HarryBelafonte bought a 21-room apartment on West End Avenue in Manhattan. “Martin would come to think of it as his home away from home, staying with us on many of his New York trips,” he recalled in his memoir, “My Song.”
“On occasion, he brought with him two or three of his closest advisers, and by the mid-sixties, the apartment was one of the movement’s headquarters.” It was a place to both plan strategy and blow off steam, laughing at stories and sipping Harveys Bristol Cream.
Ironically, for such a public figure, much of Belafonte’s work was in private.
In the 1960s, he served as an essential link between King and the SNCC. He not only bankrolled the young militant activists, but he also listened to their concerns, respected their organizing efforts and communicated their perspectives to influential power brokers.
That responsibility to speak for the movement led Belafonte to chide Bobby Kennedy in May 1963. Throughout the early 1960s, he expressed frustration with the attorney general’s detachment from the activists’ struggle. But over time, he came to appreciate Kennedy’s evolution, as he became a U.S. senator and emerged as a voice for the poor, for racial minorities, for “The Other America.”
Famously, in February 1968, Belafonte hosted “The Tonight Show” for a week, using his platform to illuminate Black perspectives and spotlight social injustice. His guests included King, who was about to launch his Poor People’s Campaign, and Kennedy, whom Belafonte urged to start a presidential campaign.
Within months, both men were assassinated.
For more than a half-century, Belafonte carried on the legacy of the 1960s, often taking provocative positions from the far-left edge of the political spectrum. Like few others, he blended the worlds of culture and politics, singing a song of justice.
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