Harry Belafonte, 96, Dies; Barrier-Breaking Singer, Actor and Activist

He supplied cash to bail Dr. King and different civil rights activists out of jail. He took half within the March on Washington in 1963. His spacious condo on West End Avenue in Manhattan turned Dr. King’s house away from house. And he quietly maintained an insurance coverage coverage on Dr. King’s life, along with his household because the beneficiary, and donated his personal cash to ensure the household was taken care of after Dr. King was assassinated in 1968.

(Nonetheless, in 2013 he sued Dr. King’s three surviving kids in a dispute over paperwork that Mr. Belafonte mentioned have been his property and the kids mentioned belonged to the King property. The swimsuit was settled the subsequent 12 months, with Mr. Belafonte retaining possession.)

In an interview with The Washington Post just a few months after Dr. King’s demise, Mr. Belafonte expressed ambivalence about his excessive profile within the civil rights motion. He would love, he mentioned, to “be able to stop answering questions as though I were a spokesman for my people,” including, “I hate marching, and getting called at 3 a.m. to bail some cats out of jail.” But, he mentioned, he accepted his position.

The Challenge of Racism

In the identical interview, he famous ruefully that though he sang music with “roots in the Black culture of American Negroes, Africa and the West Indies,” most of his followers have been white. As irritating as which will have been, he was rather more upset by the racism that he confronted even on the top of his fame.

His position within the 1957 film “Island in the Sun,” which contained the suggestion of a romance between his character and a white lady performed by Joan Fontaine, generated outrage within the South; a invoice was even launched within the South Carolina Legislature that may have fined any theater displaying the movie. In Atlanta for a profit live performance for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1962, he was twice refused service in the identical restaurant. Television appearances with white feminine singers — Petula Clark in 1968, Julie Andrews in 1969 — angered many viewers and, within the case of Ms. Clark, threatened to price him a sponsor.

He generally drew criticism from Black individuals, together with the suggestion early in his profession that he owed his success to the lightness of his pores and skin (his paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother have been white). When he divorced his spouse in 1957 and married Julie Robinson, who had been the one white member of Katherine Dunham’s dance troupe, The Amsterdam News wrote, “Many Negroes are wondering why a man who has waved the flag of justice for his race should turn from a Negro wife to a white wife.”