The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
CAPITOL CONNECTION Harry Belafonte a truly great man
I have interviewed thousands of people on the radio and I don’t generally get nervous but when I was asked to interview Harry Belafonte on the stage of the almost thousand seat “Egg” in Albany, I was nervous. I did not know what to expect.
This man is an icon. He’s 90 years old and he’s still one of the handsomest men on the face of the earth. He has not only lived through history, he’s made it. When others were running from J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy, he was in there, fighting the good fight. When Martin Luther King Jr. needed help, Harry was always there. When we spoke, he quipped that his success was linked to “Bananas” and the audience roared in appreciation of the Banana Boat song.
These days he spends his time going to prisons and talking to those who are in- carcerated about violence and how we can avoid it. He is not afraid to call out those who avoid the major battles of the day and he warns us that we are standing on the precipice of nuclear and environmental disaster.
There is reason to believe that it was Harry Belafonte who got John F. Kennedy elected president of the United States. It was he who convinced the Kennedy brothers that they had to get the incarcerated King out of jail. In order to win the presidential election, they needed the black vote and King’s release was a key to getting that done. Not only that, it was Harry Belafonte who arranged bail money for King and others when that was no easy thing to do. Putting it mildly, he has a lot of friends.
The first question I asked him during our time together was about his reaction to Donald Trump. He basically said he is dumbfounded that the American people have reversed course on the progress they have made and elected a man who is reminiscent of the Fascist leaders of the past. Harry Belafonte, of course, was instrumental in the Civil Rights march on Washington at which Dr. King gave his historic speech that electrified the country. What is confusing and saddening to Harry (he asked me to call him that) is the lack of organized resistance to Donald Trump and his brand of politics. He did acknowledge that he was heartened by the fact that 3 million people showed up to stick up for women. Nevertheless, he worries that with Trump pursuing his risky approach to world affairs, we all might end up with our skins turned to carbon.
One has only to read Belafonte’s biography to see what racial injustice is all about. He certainly calls out those successful people of all races who are doing less than their fair share for the civil rights struggle. I couldn’t help but compare Harry to Forrest Gump, the movie figure who was everywhere in modern American history. The problem, of course, is that Forrest Gump was a fictional character and Harry Belafonte really has been everywhere. In addition to his public persona, his unheralded, behind the scenes efforts really have changed American history. Harry was there and the more you learn about him, the more you marvel.
Of course, many of us know Harry as a singer. My favorite song, and maybe his, is “Scarlet Ribbons.” When I asked him about it he told us that his real profession was his acting. What’s more, he said, when he was singing he was always acting. I still cry every time I hear his recording of “Scarlet Ribbons”. He says that he loves he song because it was a song that everyone could relate to.
So when I came out on that stage with Harry, every single person in that big audience stood up out of respect and applauded this great man. They did that at the end, too. He deserved every clap.