Racialicious Crush Of The Week: Harry Belafonte

By Andrea Plaid

Harry Belafonte’s music moves in my mind and life like a childhood memory: I know he’s there and smile or dance when I hear one of his songs just for the little-kid joy it brings to me. (My personal cut: “Jump in the Line,” made famous again by Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice.)

But he moves through my own political consciousness (budding back in the 80s) as one of the first celebrities to organize efforts to aid and stand in solidarity with African countries, from speaking out against apartheid in South Africa and co-organizing the musical benefit record “We Are the World” to now, where he’s harshly criticized former president George W. Bush’s policies about Iraq.

However, Ms. Owner/Editrix, Latoya Peterson, who saw Belafonte’s he’s had generations singing his songs. With that fame, people also started knowing Belafonte as an advocate.

“At the time, we weren’t just climbing the career ladder…there were bigger concerns,” Belafonte said in the dcoumentary.  ”All of us were battling the walls of the racist existence.”

While touring with an integrated theater group, he recounted being told told to live in the black section of Las Vegas and eat in a different dining room. He refused but was informed the only way he would leave the town without honoring the contract would be in “a box.”  One day, Belafonte went to a pool–despite racist hatred (the band leader’s wife talked about guys on the balconies having had guns)–looked at the pool with a smile and did a perfect dive. The whites cleared the pool before he resurfaced.  Men came back to the pool with cameras…and asked Belafonte to pose for pictures with their wives.  The men who stood on the balconies disappeared.

That racism also tainted his views as he became a movie actor. While filming his first feature, Bright Road (1953), with his future Carmen Jones co-star Dorothy Dandridge, he stayed at a friend’s home in Beverly Hills.  On a walk after dinner, police officers pursued him. After that, he commented, “I always looked at Hollywood through tinted glasses.”

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