By Khulile Thwala
The late musician, actor, and human rights activist Harry Belafonte was well-known for his contribution to the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s.
He became one of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s closest confidants. Over the years he is reported to have organised demonstrations, raised money, and contributed his personal funds to keep movement activities going.
Belafonte passed away on Tuesday following congestive heart failure. According to the Civil Rights Movement Hall of Fame, Belafonte has advocated for a range of other humanitarian causes. In 1985, he helped to orchestrate the recording of the Grammy Award-winning song “We Are The World,” a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa.
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He further received an appointment to UNICEF as a goodwill ambassador in 1987. Belafonte has also been involved in prostate cancer advocacy since 2006 when he was diagnosed and successfully treated for the disease.
In his music career, Belafonte achieved fame when his 1956 breakthrough album Calypso became the first full-length album to sell over 1 million copies. He is perhaps best known for singing the “Banana Boat Song,” with its signature lyric “Day-O.”
He became the first African American to win an Emmy for his 1959 TV special Tonight with Belafonte. He has starred in films such as ‘Carmen Jones’ (1954), ‘Island in the Sun’ (1957), ‘Buck and the Preacher’ (1972), and ‘White Man’s Burden’ (1995).
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In 1987 he further produced a Broadway play about apartheid entitled ‘Asinamali’. Belafonte also owned his own music publishing firm and a film production company. Though born in Harlem, Belafonte’s mother sent him to live in Jamaica, the island of her birth, when he was still a child.
He returned to Harlem as a teenager at the outbreak of World War II. He found it difficult to adjust to life in the States, dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Navy. After his honourable discharge, he worked as a labourer until he found his calling in the entertainment world.
He started his career as an actor and studied his craft in the Dramatic Workshop of the School of Social Research. There his classmates included Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, Rod Steiger, and Tony Curtis.
