The Center for Policing Equity (CPE) mourns the loss of Harry Belafonte, a giant in the Civil Rights Movement who dedicated his voice not only to indelible performances that shaped, changed, and defined the culture but to the advancement of racial liberation and human rights around the world.
Born in 1927 to parents from Jamaica and Martinique, the young Belafonte moved between Harlem and the Caribbean with his family, eventually dropping out of school to join the Navy, where he loaded munitions onto ships and was introduced to Black authors and Black history by shipmates, study that was further encouraged by Marguerite Byrd, his first wife.
Initially focused on his acting career, there was no room in Hollywood of the 1950s and '60s for two Black leading men and, despite continuing to make occasional films until 2018, it was Belafonte's friend Sidney Poitier who claimed that position. Much of Belafonte's stage presence drew directly from his acting experience, however, turning his appearances into especially rich performances; his first television special, “Tonight With Belafonte,” won the first Emmy awarded to a Black performer in 1960.
Yet fame held little sway in a society that was still highly segregated, and while traveling with a White touring band in the South, Belafonte was routinely denied service by restaurants at which the musicians whose salaries he paid were dining. Frequently offered what he referred to as "Uncle Tom" roles, he both refused to take such jobs and didn't hesitate to publicly criticize those who did–even if they were his friends.
Belafonte named Paul Robeson as the role model who most strongly inspired his dedication to the struggle for racial justice, and by the time his career was taking off, he had been a close friend and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for some years. He made a critical early contribution to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), remained a key fundraiser for both the SNCC and King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and often used his earnings as an entertainer to bail activists out of jail, going so far as to fund an insurance policy on King's life so that, should the unthinkable occur, the leader's family would have immediate financial support.
After King's assassination, Belafonte acknowledged that being one of the struggle's best-known faces was not always easy and that he would like to be able "to stop answering questions as though I were a spokesman for my people. I hate marching, and getting called at 3 a.m. to bail some cats out of jail"–yet later in a life marked by unflagging activism, he also acknowledged that "from the time I get up to the time I go to sleep, I seek out the injustices done to humankind."
"I try to envision playing out the rest of my life almost exclusively devoted to reflection," he said in the 2011 documentary of his life, Sing Your Song, "but there's just too much in the world to be done."
For some the voice that brought a distant family's sound to U.S. airways, for others the soundtrack to a love story, we are all beneficiaries of Belafonte's tireless activism, devotion to the cause of justice, and what is destined to be a long-enduring legacy. The job now falls to us to build on that legacy and continue the work toward racial liberation and human rights, for all.