Harry Belafonte

America is more racially divided than it's ever been, according to activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte. Belafonte, a close friend of late civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., sat down with PBS News Hour in marking the 50th anniversary of King's assassination. The crooner blamed America's deepening ...

To mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault sits down with one of his closest friends, artist and activist Harry Belafonte, who remembers how they met and what made King so special, as well as why he says America is more racially ...

A week before his assassination, King told performer and activist Harry Belafonte that he worried the civil rights movement was “integrating into a burning house.” But when Belafonte asked what they should do, King replied, “I guess we're just going to have to become firemen.” As he fought to be heard, ...

Harry Belafonte received a telephone call. It was 1986 or early 1987, and David Geffen was on the other line. He was calling the Jamaican-American singer and activist on behalf of his production house, the Geffen Film Company, with a rather unusual request. Could he use Belafonte's music in a dark ...

The black man was Harry Belafonte, the Grammy-winning American singer and civil-rights advocate whose signature tune, “The Banana Boat Song,” brought calypso music to a mainstream audience. That fleeting moment was controversial enough to prompt an executive with the Chrysler Corporation, the ...

Harry Belafonte's Swahili love song “My Angel” with the late Miriam Makeba lays this down perfectly with the two understanding the love they have for each other is strong, but not worth the pricy emotional bags it carries. Keeping true to the Robbin Season theme, Van loses her phone as part of a traditional ...

*Famed actor and activist Harry Belafonte turned 91 on March 1, and Spike Lee made sure the stage and screen legend had a fitting celebration. The pair and their wives, Tonya Lewis Lee and Pamela Frank, had dinner with friends and family at New York's new uptown restaurant Omar at Vaucluse on ...

Even before Harry Belafonte won global fame as a performer, he saw himself as part of a grand tradition of artists who use their voices for change. His role model was Paul Robeson, the singer, actor and activist whose career was derailed by McCarthyism. This week, the National Recording Registry of the ...

Singer Harry Belafonte's 1956 album "Calypso" is such a classic it's now been inducted into the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. On Wednesday it was one of 25 audio recordings marked for preservation as a representative of America's artistic, cultural and historic treasures. But Belafonte ...