‘To-Day-O!’

Harry Belafonte is still pushing the black community forward

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Harry Belafonte’s voice is full of gravel accumulated over decades of singing and civil rights activism. Though he will never again hit the high notes that made “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)” the biggest single on his million-selling 1956 album “Calypso,” his voice is still instantly recognizable. Listen closely and you can still detect the sweetness under decades of laughter and righteous indignation.

Mr. Belafonte has wrestled with the rewards and burdens of fame for most of his 90 years. The public got its first look at the New Yorkborn activist and entertainer in the early 1950s when he popularized the Caribbean singing style known as Calypso.

While the former janitor’s assistant turned international sex symbol was a much-in-demand performer, he was already a committed civil rights activist at a time before the movement generated major headlines.

Mentored by Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Robeson, Mr. Belafonte befriended Martin Luther King Jr., when he visited New York in the early 1950s. Later, he would join the civil rights leader’s inner circle.

As one of MLK’s highest profile financial backers, Mr. Belafonte participated in the 1963 March on Washington and frequently bailed his friend and mentor out of jail. This is why Mr. Belafonte insists he was an activist before he was a popular singer and entertainer.

Even as he accumulated top prizes in the arts — three Grammys and one Tony Award along with prestigious theater and film opportunities with top directors and a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, for his humanitarian efforts — Mr. Belafonte’s heart never strayed too far from activism.

In recent years, Mr. Belafonte has been a fierce critic of American foreign and domestic policy. He also has lambasted what he considers the indifference of influential black artists and athletes who “cash in on the fruits of the harvest” of an earlier generation of civil rights activists without paying forward their good fortune.

For his part, Mr. Belafonte founded the Sankofa Justice & Equity Fund, a nonprofit social justice organization that seeks to channel culture and celebrity into