Coretta Scott King and Harry Belafonte at the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr, 1968.
Harry Belafonte (1927-2023) was a Black American singer, actor, and civil rights activist. He was the first Black American to win an Emmy Award (for US television) and the first solo artist of any race to sell over a million copies of a music album – his album “Calypso” (1956) was the first gold LP ever. It has his best known song, “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)”. He would go on to use his fame and fortune to fight for equal rights for Blacks, becoming part of Martin Luther King’s inner circle, not just as friend and advisor, but also as donor and fundraiser.
He was a mover and shaker behind:
- 1961: Freedom Riders.
- 1963: March on Washington.
- 1964: Freedom Summer.
- 1985: “We Are the World”.
Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in “Carmen Jones” (1954).
People:
- heroes: Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois.
- friends: Sidney Poitier, Martin Luther King, Jr.
- classmates: Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur (Dorothy on “Golden Girls”), Tony Curtis.
- fellow UNICEF ambassador: Audrey Hepburn.
- starred opposite: Dorothy Dandridge (pictured above).
- was at: the Baldwin-Kennedy meeting on May 24th 1963, along with James Baldwin, Robert Kennedy, Lorraine Hansberry, Lena Horne and others.
He was born in Harlem. His mother was from Jamaica, his father from Martinique. He spent part of his childhood in Jamaica, where he was brought up by his White grandmother. During the Second World War he dropped out of high school to join the Navy. He was never sent overseas, but he read plenty of Du Bois, in particular “Dusk of Dawn” (1940).
After the war he joined the American Negro Theatre in Harlem. Its aim was to put on plays “by, for, about, and near” Black people. He worked as a stage hand and became fast friends with a janitor named Sidney Poitier. They would go on to become actors at the theatre in the late 1940s, and Hollywood stars in the 1950s. Both were US-born with West Indian roots. Belafonte was lighter skinned, could sing, and was less neutered by Hollywood, both racially and sexually.
Paul Robeson showed up one day at the theatre. Belafonte remembers:
“My mother had told me to wake up every morning and know how I’d wage the fight against injustice. That night, Paul Robeson gave me my epiphany: It would guide me for the rest of my life.”
Robeson showed him that he could combine art and activism. Art – whether music, theatre, or film – could be used to fight against stereotypes, to inform people of their true history, to expose injustice, to open their eyes and put hope in their hearts.
On being a Black artist:
“There were two choices that one could make. Maybe there were more than two, but there were certainly two very clear ones.
“One was to do the art of Eurocentric, a choice, the Eurocentric value, the Eurocentric roots which many chose to do, and try to do that art in as perfected a way as you possibly can. There’s one thing that’s gonna always be true about that fact or that choice. And that is that you’ll never touch the soul of who you are, because that’s not what you inner soul is experiencing or where your inner soul lives.”
– Abagond, 2023.
See also:
- Harry Belafonte at the Baldwin-Kennedy meeting
- songs:
- being universal
- Orwell: Why I Write
- Harlem
- stereotype
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Abagond 
What!? No “Requiescat in pace.” Are you losing your religion or do you think Harry doesn’t deserve to rest in peace?
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Belafonte has joined the ancestors.
He and others of his generation who combined art with activism are the reason why The Establishment has gone to great lengths to seduce Black artists since the 1980s.
They convince Black artists to identify with their class interests and ignore race and ethnicity. We’ve ended up with anti-Black colored people who turn their backs on the concerns of the masses of Black folk.
Abagond, thank you for honoring Belafonte with this piece.
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