NIGEL A CAMPBELL
Legendary Jamaica-American entertainer and social activist Harry Belafonte, (born Harold George Bellanfanti, Jr. to Jamaican parents in New York) died at age 96 on April 25 leaving behind a legacy of notable accolades in humanitarian activism in America, and a parallel high-profile career as actor and singer that places him in the pantheon of iconic figures in both the arts and politics in the Americas. Multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-careered, Belafonte was inspirational and continues the legacy of Caribbean-American excellence worthy of investigation, and often-times, duplication.
Newspapers around the world have published obituaries that herald a prolific recording career, and a life of activism for the civil rights of black Americans in the 1960s, along with his continued human rights activism into the 1980s in creating an American response to Bob Geldolf’s Band Aid music-based fund-raising initiatives in aid of Ethiopian famine relief, USA for Africa and the single, We Are The World. Here in Trinidad and Tobago, however, Belafonte’s impact is measured by some citizen’s recognition that opportunities to spread the impact of Trinidadian native culture on a world stage was stymied by either professional indifference or elicited delayed praise after the well had run dry. The fairness of these criticisms become irrelevant as one adds up what he did do for the cultural and public life of Americans, and by extension Caribbean people.
[caption id="attachment_1013305" align="aligncenter" width="960"] Harry Belalfonte performing at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan in 1956. - AP Photo[/caption]
Like many West Indian folk before him, Belafonte carried on the bold activism that defined the civil rights movement before his time — what author Winston James called Caribbean radicalism in the early 20th-century America. Marcus Garvey, Hubert Harrison, Cyril Briggs, Claude McKay, Claudia Jones, CLR James, preceded Belafonte, with Malcolm X, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Louis Farrakhan (like Belafonte, a calypso singer-cum-activist) being Caribbean contemporaries in civil rights leadership moving forward.
His activism, borne on the fame garnered as a ground-breaking actor and singer that placed him in the consciousness of many more Americans than the average activist, included pivotal and creative fund-raising for the efforts of his friend and mentor, Dr Martin Luther King Jr and his movement in the 1960s. His influence and cachet was wide, beyond borders even, as he could count on European fellow artists to be magnet for money in charitable events. But, on reflection, one discerns a rift between his style of supportive activism and his contemporaries more in-your-face rattling of sabres.
[caption id="attachment_1013306" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Harry Belafonte accepted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award 2014. - Associated Press[/caption]
Belafonte’s alignment of King’s non-violence appr
