Amy Goodman: Harry Belafonte, The Lion At 80

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http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/48942/

Harry Belafonte, The Lion At 80

By Amy Goodman, King Features Syndicate. Posted March 7, 2007.

Harry Belafonte, the first African-American to win an Emmy, is a living library of the civil-rights movement and liberation struggles worldwide. He enters his ninth decade as fearless as ever.



Harry Belafonte just turned 80. The "King of Calypso" was the first person to have a million-selling album, the first African-American to win an Emmy, and is perhaps the most recognizable entertainer in the world. On Saturday, March 3, I attended his birthday party at a restaurant adjoining the New York Public Library.

The setting seemed very appropriate, as Belafonte himself is a living library of not only the civil-rights movement, but of liberation struggles around the world. In 1944, just before shipping out as a U.S. Navy sailor in World War II, he was banned from the Copacabana nightclub in New York. Ten years later, he headlined there. He knew Rosa Parks, Paul Robeson and Eleanor Roosevelt. He corresponded with Nelson Mandela in prison, when the U.S. government considered the South African leader a terrorist.

Belafonte was a close confidant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He spoke daily with King. The FBI was listening. Taylor Branch, the award-winning author of a trilogy of books on King, was at Harry's party. Belafonte describes how Branch's final book in the trilogy, "At Canaan's Edge," uncovered extensive FBI wiretaps of their conversations.

For fighting for the right to vote and to end segregation, Belafonte says: "We were looked upon as unpatriotic; we were looked upon as people who were insurgents, that we were doing things to betray our nation and the tranquility of our citizens. That engaged the FBI. Everything we talked about was tapped." The FBI even came to his house, when he was away, and frightened his wife and children. He tells me: "The essential difference between then and now is that no previous regime tried to subvert the Constitution. They may have done illegal acts. They may have gone outside the law to do these, but they did them clandestinely. No one stepped to the table as arrogantly as George W. Bush and his friends have done and said, 'We legally want to suspend the rights of citizens, the right to surveil, the right to read your mail, the right to arrest you without charge.'" His criticism is not limited to President Bush (whom he called, while visiting President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, "the greatest terrorist in the world").

President Bill Clinton crashed Belafonte's birthday party, which was taking place as the Democratic presidential contenders battled for the African-American vote. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were in Selma, Ala., for the 42nd anniversary of the famous voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

In his remarks, Clinton toasted Harry: "I was inspired by your politics more than you can ever know. Every time I ever saw you after I became president, I thought that my conscience was being graded, and I was getting less than an A. And every president should feel that way about somebody as good as you."

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