Belafonte, Harry (Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.)

Impact on the world

Released 'Calypso' in 1956, the first album by any solo artist to sell over a million copies, becoming known as the 'King of Calypso' and the first African American man to win an Emmy Award, before deliberately stepping back from a flourishing Hollywood career between 1959 and 1970 to dedicate himself to the civil rights movement as one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s most trusted confidants, financially backing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, helping organize the 1963 March on Washington, and personally covering babysitting expenses for King's children so King could remain focused on movement organizing; he refused to perform anywhere in the segregated American South between 1954 and 1961.

Life & background

Born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in Harlem in 1927 to Caribbean immigrant parents, Belafonte struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia and dropped out of high school at 17 to join the Navy, returning home afterward to work as a janitor's assistant; given theater tickets as a tip on the job, he attended a performance that night and found, by his own account, his true calling. He studied drama at Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop alongside classmates including Marlon Brando and Bea Arthur, performed at New York's Royal Roost jazz club backed by musicians including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, and made his film debut in 1953's 'Bright Road' supporting Dorothy Dandridge, already profiled in this collection, before his calypso recordings made him an international star and one of the first Black television producers, winning an Emmy for 1959's 'Tonight with Belafonte.' Drawing direct political inspiration from his own mentor, singer and activist Paul Robeson, Belafonte became deeply embedded in civil rights organizing through the 1960s, marching with King in Montgomery, performing at fundraisers for sit-in movements, and sitting beside Coretta Scott King at her husband's 1968 funeral after having met with King himself shortly before his assassination; King reportedly confided in Belafonte that he feared the movement was integrating into 'a burning house,' a remark that weighed on Belafonte for the rest of his life. He went on to produce the 1985 charity single 'We Are the World,' became a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, and remained politically outspoken into his later decades, including a controversial 2002 comparison of Secretary of State Colin Powell to a 'house slave' for serving in the George W. Bush administration and a 2006 description of Bush himself as 'the greatest tyrant in the world,' remarks that drew substantial criticism even from within Black political circles; he received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989, the National Medal of Arts in 1994, an honorary Academy Award in 2014, and was honorarily inducted into Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, already profiled in this collection, before his 2023 death from congestive heart failure at age 96.

Sources

1. NMAAHC; Encyclopædia Britannica; Biography.com; The Conversation (Harry Belafonte: a singer and actor but an activist at heart); CNN Fast Facts