He provided money to bail Dr. King and other civil rights activists out of prison. He participated in the 1963 Washington March. His spacious apartment on West End Avenue in Manhattan became Dr. King’s home away from home. And he quietly maintained an insurance policy for Dr. King’s life, with the King family as beneficiaries, and donated his money to ensure that the family was cared for after Dr. King’s death. assassination in 1968.
(However, in 2013 he sued Dr. King’s three surviving children in a dispute over documents Mr Belafonte said were his property and that the children were believed to be the property of the King. The lawsuit was settled the following year, with Mr. Belafonte retaining title.)
In an interview with The Washington Post months after Dr King’s death, Mr. Belafonte expressed contradiction about his high position in the civil rights movement. He wanted “to be able to stop answering questions as if I were the spokesperson for my people,” he said, adding, “I hate marching and being called at 3 a.m. to bail a number of cats out of prison.” But, he said, he accepted his role.
The Challenge of Racism
In the same interview, he sadly noted that although he sings music that has “native roots in the Negro culture of Black America, Africa, and the West Indies,” most of his fans They are all white. How frustrating that may have been, but he was far more annoyed by the racism he faced even at the height of his fame.
His role in the 1957 film “Island in the Sun,” hinted at a romance between his character and a white woman he played. Joan Fontaine, causing outrage in the South; a bill was even introduced in the South Carolina Legislature that would penalize any movie theater. In 1962, in Atlanta during a fundraising concert for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Mr. Belafonte was twice denied service in the same restaurant. Television appearances with white female singers — Petula Clark in 1968, Julie Andrews in 1969 — angered many audiences, and in Ms. threatened to make him lose a sponsor.
He was sometimes criticized by Blacks, including suggesting early in his career that he owed his success to his light complexion (his grandfather and grandmother were white). When he divorced his wife in 1957 and married Julie Robinsonwho was once the only white member of Katherine Dunham’s dance troupe, The Amsterdam News wrote, “Many blacks are wondering why a man who has raised the banner of justice for his race should be going from a black wife to a white wife.”
