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 house on West Finish Avenue in Manhattan turned Dr. King’s dwelling away from dwelling. And he quietly maintained an insurance coverage coverage on Dr. King’s life, with the King household because the beneficiary, and donated his personal cash to make it possible for 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 stated have been his property and that the kids stated belonged to the King property. The go well with was settled the subsequent yr, with Mr. Belafonte retaining possession.)
In an interview with The Washington Publish a number of months after Dr. King’s demise, Mr. Belafonte expressed ambivalence about his excessive profile within the civil rights motion. He wish to “have the ability to cease answering questions as if I have been a spokesman for my folks,” he stated, including, “I hate marching, and getting known as at 3 a.m. to bail some cats out of jail.” However, he stated, he accepted his function.
The Problem of Racism
In the identical interview, he famous ruefully that though he sang music with “roots within the Black tradition of American Negroes, Africa and the West Indies,” most of his followers have been white. As irritating as that will have been, he was way more upset by the racism that he confronted even on the top of his fame.
His function within the 1957 film “Island within the Solar,” 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 will have fined any theater displaying the movie. In Atlanta for a profit live performance for the Southern Christian Management Convention in 1962, Mr. Belafonte was twice refused service in the identical restaurant. Tv 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 cost him a sponsor.
He generally drew criticism from Black folks, 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 Information wrote, “Many Negroes are questioning why a person who has waved the flag of justice for his race ought to flip from a Negro spouse to a white spouse.”