Of all the contributions for which Harry Belafonte will likely be remembered, perhaps none is more enduring than the famed artist’s lifelong support of youth activism.
This support stemmed from Belafonte’s early involvement in black student-led Civil Rights Movement protests in the Fifties, but it surely didn’t end there. Using his social standing and private wealth in a profession that after made him “the highest-paid black performer in history“Belafonte too helped establish hip-hop as a dominant cultural force in the Eighties and advocated for Black uprisings against police brutality in the 2010s in cities comparable to Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore.
As a historian who did it examined black student activism during the civil rights era I still see Belafonte who died April 25, 2023as one of the biggest American “purebred men”, social justice warriors and elder statesmen of young racial justice movements.
Born in a new black era
Born in Harlem in 1927, Belafonte was immersed in politics and art A new black eraan era that spawned radically new interpretations of black aesthetics and ushered in new efforts for black liberation.
As the modern Civil Rights Movement grew in America after World War II, Belafonte joined the ranks of black artists willing to use their platforms to support the cause. But it was the direct motion phase, initiated in the early 1960s by black students throughout the South, that catapulted the movement into a more intense confrontation with Jim Crow in America.
Meshes, Freedom Rides AND prisons organized by organizations comparable to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – or SNCC – i Congress of Racial Equality brought Belafonte deeper into the orbit of the freedom struggle. Belafonte once said that he admired young activists for “the strength of its independence“
A unifying force
One of the most tense moments for young activists was the moment Freedom Rides this brought waves of young black students to the Deep South to challenge the legality of segregation on interstate buses. Many of them became victims of police brutality in infamous incidents Parchman Farm Correctional Facility in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Not only did Belafonte make a generous donation to them, but his willingness to support activists reinforced their admiration for him.
“People were just overwhelmed.” – recalled civil rights activist Kwame Ture, formerly often called Stokely Carmichael, “and I consider that began Bro. Belafonte’s long association – as advisor, benefactor and older brother – with the young freedom-fighting organization.”
Thomas F. Holgate Library at Bennett College
As the students bravely languished in a sweltering Mississippi prison, they transformed Belafonte’s signature song into an anthem of freedom. Hit single by the Calypso singer “Day-O (Banana Boat Song)” echoed through southern prisons as students were arrested for challenging Jim Crow laws repurposed the song by adding new lyrics:
Hey, I went on a little Greyhound bus tour.
Yes!
Freedom will come and it won’t last long.
Well, to fight segregation, we now have to do that.
Yes, freedom is coming and it won’t last long.
He financed SNCC retreats to Africa
Belafonte’s involvement with SNCC culminated in the opportunity for him to take part in: while in Guinea, West Africa, in September 1964.
Sensing burnout and frustration that was constructing inside the organization as a result of growing dissatisfaction with it moderation and stall tactics from each the liberal left and the conservative right, Belafonte arranged and paid for a three-week sabbatical. Eleven SNCC activists, including John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer and Stokely Carmichael made this journey. Belafonte introduced them to Guinean political dignitaries, including: The president’s rescue trip. This trip proved crucial to SNCC’s deal with the potential for black empowerment in the United States – a discovery that greatly shaped the coming Black Power Movement that developed in 1966.
Ideological tensions regarding the direction of the Civil Rights Movement after 1965 he moved Belafonte closer to the work of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
But the politically conscious showman never turned his back on the young activists who helped define the decade.
He supported hip-hop in its early days
It should come as no surprise that a man who had a deep passion for people music and folk songs turned to hip-hop, which emerged in the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties. Belafonte saw hip-hop as a logical next step in the evolution of black cultural expression and a vital space for black militancy. In a 2006 interview He declared“When I frolicked in the South Bronx with Bambaataa Africa AND Mel Meland watching the birth of hip-hop culture, it gave me a deep sense of the great things that await us in the future.
Belafonte produced the 1984 film “Beata Street”, a celebration of hip-hop that has played a key role in introducing this art form to a wider audience. One of the featured artists, Melle Mel of the pioneering hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, he remembered meeting Belafont before writing your poem on title song from the soundtrack “Beat Street Breakdown. His Lyrics reflected his exchange with the civil rights legend:
People in fear, the leaders made a mistake And now they cannot even look in the mirror ‘Cause we now have to suffer as things get harder And that is why we now have to get tougher
In later years, Belafonte intensified his support for hip-hop, whether or not it was encouraging Fidel Castro provided support for Cuban rappers in the Nineteen Ninetiesor through the various hip-hop summits he organized in an attempt to encourage and promote hip-hop for the most eminent artists to speak more openly on social justice issues.
Mentor of young activists
Towards the end of his life, Belafonte continued to mentor young activists. In the aftermath Trayvon Martin murder in 2013, Belafonte visited Tallahassee, Florida to support the work Defenders of dreamsa company founded by former students of Florida A&M University to, amongst other things, draw attention to injustice Stand your ground a law that was used to justify Martin’s fatal shooting.
In solidarity with students, Belafonte I told them: “I’m here because I’m part of your history. You called and I am here to tell you that those of us who have been in this fight for over a century are happy to be a part of this moment.”
We accepted that Black lives matter
Belafonte’s tireless commitment to human rights was perfectly matched by his support for Black Lives Matter movement in the 2010s as he continued to advocate for disrupting the political systems that sustained state-sanctioned violence.
Belafonte’s resistance and support for the movement was unwavering. “Radical thinking at its best should make people uncomfortable” – Belafonte declared in 2015. “We speak about uprisings in communities like St. Louis and Baltimore, and that is what the protests are for.”
From the 1960s until Belafonte’s death, young people from several generations turned to him for wisdom and guidance. His enduring commitment to youth and idealism all the time made him easy to find.
