That little white boy that I was, playing solo Subbuteo on his front porch on Penryn Road in Northampton, had no idea that the singer of one his favourite songs on Family Favourites, the programme mum and dad listened to in the front room every Sunday lunch time, was being sung by a black man. Why should he have and why would it matter? \u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThat it all came to matter very much indeed to a world in which the times they were a-changing is evidenced by the enormous sadness conveyed in the dozen or so obituaries I read of Harry Belafonte (left),<\/em><\/strong> the civil rights and entertainment giant who began as a ground-breaking actor and singer and became an activist, humanitarian and conscience of the world. \u00a0 He died on 25th<\/sup> April 2023. He was 96. \u00a0 The cause of his death was congestive heart failure at his New York home, his wife Pamela by his side, said publicist Ken Sunshine. \u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cBanana Boat Song (Day-O),\u201d and its call of \u201cDay-O! Daaaaay-O.\u201d But he forged a greater legacy once he scaled back his performing career in the 1960s and lived out his life adhering to the decree, by his hero Paul Robeson (right)<\/em><\/strong> that artists are \u201cgatekeepers of truth.\u201d Belafonte stands as the model and the epitome of the celebrity activist. Few kept up with his time and commitment and none his stature as a meeting point among Hollywood, Washington and the Civil Rights Movement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.,(left) <\/em><\/strong>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 Beyonc\u00e9 for failing to meet their \u201csocial responsibilities,\u201d and mentoring Usher, Common, Danny Glover and many others. In Spike Lee\u2019s 2018 film \u201cBlacKkKlansman,\u201d he was fittingly cast as an elder statesman schooling young activists about the country\u2019s past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Belafonte\u2019s 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\u2019s first Black president, Barack Obama (right)<\/em><\/strong>, whom Belafonte would remember asking to cut him \u201csome slack.\u201d Belafonte responded, \u201cWhat makes you think that\u2019s not what I\u2019ve been doing?\u201d Belafonte had been a major artist since the 1950s. He won a Tony Award in 1954 for his starring role in John Murray Anderson\u2019s \u201cAlmanac\u201d and five years later became the first Black performer to win an Emmy for the TV special \u201cTonight with Harry Belafonte.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1954, he co-starred with Dorothy Dandridge in the Otto Preminger-directed musical \u201cCarmen Jones,\u201d a popular breakthrough for an all-Black cast. The 1957 movie \u201cIsland in the Sun\u201d was banned in several Southern cities, where theater owners were threatened by the Ku Klux Klan because of the film\u2019s interracial romance between Belafonte and Joan Fontaine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His \u201cCalypso,\u201d released in 1955, became the first officially certified million-selling album by a solo performer, and started a national infatuation with Caribbean rhythms (Belafonte was nicknamed, reluctantly, the \u201cKing of Calypso\u2033). Admirers of Belafonte included a young Bob Dylan, who debuted on record in the early \u201960s by playing harmonica on Belafonte\u2019s \u201cMidnight Special.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHarry was the best balladeer in the land and everybody knew it,\u201d Dylan (right)<\/em><\/strong> later wrote. \u201cHarry was that rare type of character that radiates greatness, and you hope that some of it rubs off on you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belafonte befriended King in the spring of 1956 after the young civil rights leader called and asked for a meeting. They spoke for hours, and Belafonte would remember feeling King raised him to the \u201chigher plane of social protest.\u201d Then at the peak of his singing career, Belafonte was soon producing a benefit concert for the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, that helped make King a national figure. By the early 1960s, he had decided to make civil rights his priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was having almost daily talks with Martin,\u201d Belafonte wrote in his memoir \u201cMy Song,\u201d published in 2011. \u201cI realized that the movement was more important than anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Kennedys were among the first politicians to seek his opinions, which he willingly shared. John F. Kennedy (left), at a time when Black voters were as likely to support Republicans as they would Democrats, was so anxious for his support that during the 1960 election he visited Belafonte at his Manhattan home. Belafonte explained King\u2019s importance and arranged for King and Kennedy to meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was quite taken by the fact that he (Kennedy) knew so little about the Black community,\u201d Belafonte told NBC in 2013. \u201cHe knew the headlines of the day, but he wasn\u2019t really anywhere nuanced or detailed on the depth of Black anguish or what our struggle\u2019s really about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belafonte would often criticize the Kennedys for their reluctance to challenge the Southern segregationists who were then a substantial part of the Democratic Party. He argued with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the president\u2019s brother, over the government\u2019s failure to protect the \u201cFreedom Riders\u201d trying to integrate bus stations. He was among the Black activists at a widely publicized meeting with the attorney general, when playwright Lorraine Hansberry and others stunned Kennedy by questioning whether the country even deserved Black allegiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBobby turned red at that. I had never seen him so shaken,\u201d Belafonte later wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1963, Belafonte was deeply involved with the historic March on Washington. He recruited his close friend Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman and other celebrities and persuaded the left-wing Marlon Brando to co-chair the Hollywood delegation with the more conservative Charlton Heston, a pairing designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience. In 1964, he and Poitier personally delivered tens of thousands of dollar to activists in Mississippi after three \u201cFreedom Summer\u201d volunteers were murdered \u2014 the two celebrities were chased by car at one point by members of the KKK. The following year, he brought in Tony Bennett, Joan Baez and other singers to perform for the marchers in Selma, Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When King was assassinated, in 1968, Belafonte helped pick out the suit he was buried in, sat next to his widow, Coretta, at the funeral, and continued to support his family, in part through an insurance policy he had taken out on King in his lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMuch of my political outlook was already in place when I encountered Dr. King,\u201d Belafonte later wrote. \u201cI was well on my way and utterly committed to the civil rights struggle. I came to him with expectations and he affirmed them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n King\u2019s death left Belafonte isolated from the civil rights community. He was turned off by the separatist beliefs of Stokely Carmichael and other \u201cBlack Power\u201d activists and had little chemistry with King\u2019s designated successor, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy. But the entertainer\u2019s causes extended well beyond the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He helped introduce South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba (left)<\/em><\/strong> to American audiences, the two winning a Grammy in 1964 for the concert record \u201cAn Evening With Belafonte\/Makeba.\u201d He coordinated Nelson Mandela\u2019s first visit to the U.S. since being released from prison in 1990. A few years earlier, he had initiated the all-star, million-selling \u201cWe Are the World\u201d recording, the Grammy-winning charity song for famine relief in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belafonte\u2019s early life and career paralleled those of Poitier, who died in 2022. Both spent part of their childhoods in the Caribbean and ended up in New York. Both served in the military during World War II, acted in the American Negro Theatre and then broke into film. Poitier shared his belief in civil rights, but still dedicated much of his time to acting, a source of some tension between them. While Poitier had a sustained and historic run in the 1960s as a leading man and box office success, Belafonte grew tired of acting and turned down parts he regarded as \u201cneutered.\u2033<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSidney Poitier (right)<\/em><\/strong> radiated a truly saintly dignity and calm. Not me,\u2033 Belafonte wrote in his memoir. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to tone down my sexuality, either. Sidney did that in every role he took.\u2033<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belafonte was very much a human being. He acknowledged extra-marital affairs, negligence as a parent and a frightening temper, driven by lifelong insecurity. \u201cWoe to the musician who missed his cue, or the agent who fouled up a booking,\u2033 he confided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his memoir, he chastised Poitier for a \u201cradical breach\u2033 by backing out on a commitment to star as Mandela in a TV miniseries Belafonte had conceived, then agreeing to play Mandela for a rival production. He became so estranged from King\u2019s widow and children that he was not asked to speak at her funeral. He later sued three of King\u2019s children over control of some of the civil rights leader\u2019s personal papers, and would allege that the family was preoccupied with \u201cselling trinkets and memorabilia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He made news years earlier when he compared Colin Powell, the first Black secretary of state, to a slave \u201cpermitted to come into the house of the master\u201d for his service in the George W. Bush administration. He was in Washington in January 2009 as Obama was inaugurated, officiating along with Baez and others at a gala called the Inaugural Peace Ball. But Belafonte would later criticize Obama for failing to live up to his promise and lacking \u201cfundamental empathy with the dispossessed, be they white or Black.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belafonte did occasionally serve in government, as cultural adviser for the Peace Corps during the Kennedy administration and decades later as goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. For his film and music career, he received the motion picture academy\u2019s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a National Medal of Arts, a Grammy for lifetime achievement and numerous other honorary prizes. He found special pleasure in winning a New York Film Critics Award in 1996 for his work as a gangster in Robert Altman\u2019s \u201cKansas City.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m as proud of that film critics\u2019 award as I am of all my gold records,\u201d he wrote in his memoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was married three times, most recently to photographer Pamela Frank, and had four children. Three of them \u2014 Shari, David and Gina \u2014 became actors. He is also survived by two stepchildren and eight grandchildren.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in 1927, in Harlem. His father was a seaman and cook with Dutch and Jamaican ancestry and his mother, part Scottish, worked as a domestic. Both parents were undocumented immigrants and Belafonte recalled living \u201can underground life, as criminals of a sort, on the run.\u2033<\/p>\n\n\n\n The household was violent: Belafonte sustained brutal beatings from his father, and he was sent to live for several years with relatives in Jamaica. Belafonte was a poor reader \u2014 he was probably dyslexic, he later realized \u2014 and dropped out of high school, soon joining the Navy. While in the service, he read \u201cColor and Democracy\u201d by the Black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois (left)<\/em><\/strong> and was deeply affected, calling it the start of his political education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the war, he found a job in New York as an assistant janitor for some apartment buildings. One tenant liked him enough to give him free tickets to a play at the American Negro Theatre, a community repertory for black performers. Belafonte was so impressed that he joined as a volunteer, then as an actor. Poitier was a peer, both of them \u201cskinny, brooding and vulnerable within our hard shells of self-protection,\u2033 Belafonte later wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belafonte met Brando, Walter Matthau and other future stars while taking acting classes at the New School for Social Research. Brando was an inspiration as an actor, and he and Belafonte became close, sometimes riding on Brando\u2019s motorcycle or double dating or playing congas together at parties. Over the years, Belafonte\u2019s political and artistic lives would lead to friendships with everyone from Frank Sinatra and Lester Young to Eleanor Roosevelt and Fidel Castro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His early stage credits included \u201cDays of Our Youth\u2033 and Sean O\u2019Casey\u2019s \u201cJuno and the Peacock,\u2033 a play Belafonte remembered less because of his own performance than because of a backstage visitor, Robeson, the actor, singer and activist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat I remember more than anything Robeson said, was the love he radiated, and the profound responsibility he felt, as an actor, to use his platform as a bully pulpit,\u2033 Belafonte wrote in his memoir. His friendship with Robeson and support for left-wing causes eventually brought trouble from the government. FBI agents visited him at home and allegations of Communism nearly cost him an appearance on \u201cThe Ed Sullivan Show.\u2033 Leftists suspected, and Belafonte emphatically denied, that he had named names of suspected Communists so he could perform on Sullivan\u2019s show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the 1950s, Belafonte was also singing, finding gigs at the Blue Note, the Vanguard and other clubs \u2014 he was backed for one performance by Charlie Parker and Max Roach \u2014 and becoming immersed in folk, blues, jazz and the calypso he had heard while living in Jamaica. Starting in 1954, he released such top 10 albums as \u201cMark Twain and Other Folk Favorites\u2033 and \u201cBelafonte,\u2033 and his popular singles included \u201cMathilda,\u2033 \u201cJamaica Farewell\u2033 and \u201cThe Banana Boat Song,\u2033 a reworked Caribbean ballad that was a late addition to his \u201cCalypso\u2033 record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe found ourselves one or two songs short, so we threw in `Day-O\u2019 as filler,\u2033 Belafonte wrote in his memoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was a superstar, but one criticized, and occasionally sued, for taking traditional material and not sharing the profits. Belafonte expressed regret and also worried about being typecast as a calypso singer, declining for years to sing \u201cDay-O\u2033 live after he gave television performances against banana boat backdrops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belafonte was the rare young artist to think about the business side of show business. He started one of the first all-Black music publishing companies. He produced plays, movies and TV shows, including Off-Broadway\u2019s \u201cTo Be Young, Gifted, and Black,\u201d in 1969. He was the first Black person to produce for TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Belafonte made history in 1968 by filling in for Johnny Carson on the \u201cTonight\u201d show for a full week. Later that year, a simple, spontaneous gesture led to another milestone. Appearing on a taped TV special starring Petula Clark (right),<\/em><\/strong> Belafonte joined the British singer on the anti-war song \u201cOn the Path of Glory.\u2033 At one point, Clark placed a hand on Belafonte\u2019s arm. The show\u2019s sponsor, Chrysler, demanded the segment be reshot. Clark and Belafonte resisted, successfully, and for the first time a white woman touched a Black man\u2019s arm on primetime television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 1970s, he returned to movie acting, co-starring with Poitier in \u201cBuck and the Preacher,\u2033 a commercial flop, and the raucous and popular comedy \u201cUptown Saturday Night.\u201d His other film credits include \u201cBobby,\u2033 \u201cWhite Man\u2019s Burden,\u2033 cameos in Altman\u2019s \u201cThe Player\u2033 and \u201cReady to Wear,\u2033 and the Altman-directed TV series \u201cTanner on Tanner.\u2033 In 2011, HBO aired a documentary about Belafonte, \u201cSing Your Song.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mindful to the end that he grew up in poverty, Belafonte did not think of himself as an artist who became an activist, but an activist who happened to be an artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen you grow up, son,\u2033 Belafonte remembered his mother telling him, \u201cnever go to bed at night knowing that there was something you could have done during the day to strike a blow against injustice and you didn\u2019t do it.\u2033<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back at my six year soccer-nut, self I think I knew even then that I wanted to one day live on an island in the sun. It took me sixty four years to get here, and as my wife and I landed in Arrecife here on Lanzarote I was humming a favourite and famous song. Island in the Sun, written by Harry Belafonte and Irving Burgie (Lord Burgess), and performed by Belafonte for the 1957 film Island in the Sun and on his 1957 album Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean, was playing in my head and booming out of my heart.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1960, when i was eight years old, Harry Belafonte, with \u00b4folk\u00b4singer Odetta, performed a version on television of the folkie children\u00b4s song that we all knew as There\u00b4s A Hole In My Bucket, Dear Liaza, A hole. It is a comedic duet that has work-shy boy finding all sorts of excuses to not go fetch a pail of water and an impatient, toe tapping, slowly fuming wife \/ girlfriend \/ mother \/ grandma \/ aunt \/ sister. She turns all those excuses on their head, and the song became a firm favourite on Uk radio programme Junior Family Favourites. I was eight years old in 1960 and I\u00b4m not sure we had a tewlly then, although iot would have been unlikley that the show would have imported from US television. In fact it would be arund sixty years until I eventually saw a You Tube (still available) of that grainy television clip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, throughout my working life as a peripatetic word-artist, government funded and approved to vist schools and deliver creative writing studies I would utilise songs like Hole In My Bucket and Marvellous Toy when working with young children to highlight various writing techniques. My son in his school in South Korea similarly employs those songs and others for the same purposes with his junior South Korean stuents as they learn English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The influence of Harry Belafonte was profound in his lifetime, and in his death will continue to be so for generations to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n acknowledgements<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n please note logo The primary sources for this piece was published by New York Associated Press <\/strong>Former AP writer Mike Stewart contributed to this report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Images employed have been taken from on line sites only where categorised as images free to use.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For a more comprehensive detail of our attribution policy see our for reference only post on 7th<\/sup> April entitled Aspirations And Attributions.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWhen you grow up, son,\u2033 Belafonte remembered his mother telling him, \u201cnever go to bed at night knowing that there was something you could have done during the day to strike a blow against injustice and you didn\u2019t do it.\u2033<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-and-tradition","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14761"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14901,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14761\/revisions\/14901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/2-1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/3-1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/4-3.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/5-1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/6.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/7.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/8.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/9-1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/10-1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aata.dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/11-1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n