HARRY BELAFONTE

1927 - 2023

The young and young at heart in the 1950s welcomed Harry Belafonte’s burst into pop culture and fame. His renditions of bright calypso music were his very own. He was the first artist to sell a million record albums in the world, period. Harold George Bellanfanti, Jr., was born in Harlem, New York, to Mr. Harold George Bellanfanti, Sr., a chef, and Mrs. Melvine Love Bellanfanti, a housekeeper on March 1, 1927. The couple opted to send their son to live with a grandmother in her native Jamaica for his early years of education.

When he returned to Harlem as a teenager, he dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Navy while World War II was raging. At the war’s end, he found himself at loose ends, and worked as a janitor’s assistant. When someone gave him tickets to see a production at the American Negro Theater, his life took on new meaning. He met Sidney Poitier, another struggling actor who became his lifelong friend and collaborator. In those days, they would scrape together enough to buy one ticket to plays, then rotate at intervals so they both could attend! They schooled each other on productions, techniques and style. The “schooling” paid off. Each went on to give award-winning performances in a variety of roles.

Harry became one of the rare entertainers to win the coveted EGOT set of awards—the Emmy for excellence in television; multiple Grammy awards for his recordings and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy; an Oscar, the Academy Award, for excellence in film and the Tony for his performance on the Broadway stage. He also received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989, and in 1994, the National Medal of Arts.

Legendary performer and activist Paul Robeson took young Harry under his wing early on, teaching him how to mix a successful entertainment career and to be an effective civil rights supporter. Harry listened to his mentor. He led a very public career in entertainment, and led an equally successful career in public and behind the scenes in civil rights. He and other Hollywood actors and singers marched publicly in that dangerous route from Selma to Montgomery. Harry himself helped to organize the March on Washington in 1963. He was a close, trusted friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He personally bailed Dr. King out of the Birmingham jail, where King’s famous “Letter” originated. Belafonte and Poitier also gave tens of thousands of dollars to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), funding their Freedom Summer education and voting programs, and gave their own in-person performances.

Harry Belafonte masterfully mixed his world of glamor with the rough and tumble world of activism and politics. He stood against racism and prejudice in America, and would not perform in the segregated South until there was progress in the 1960s. He stood against apartheid in South Africa, and worked to end it. When deadly famine struck Ethiopia, Belafonte’s planning went into high gear. The 1985 “We Are the World” production including scores of stars, was his brainchild. The USA for Africa parent organization would take in millions to alleviate hunger for those suffering in Africa—and in America.

In 1987, Harry Belafonte became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, advocating for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, a position he held until his death.

In his personal life, Belafonte was married three times, to Marguerite Byrd, to Julie Robinson and to Pamela Frank. He had four children, Adrienne and Shari, Gina and David; then five grandchildren. He was successfully treated for prostate cancer in 1996. Then in 2004, a stroke affected his inner-ear and took his balance. He moved from public life but remained a drum major for justice in private. He died at the age of 96 from congestive heart failure on April 25, 2023, at his home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in New York City. t

Facts gathered from multiple media sources.