Of all the contributions for which Harry Belafonte will be remembered, perhaps none is more enduring than the celebrated entertainer’s lifelong support for youth activism.
This support can be traced back to Belafonte’s early involvement in the Black student-led protests of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, but it didn’t end there. Using his social stature and personal wealth from a career that once made him the “most highly paid Black performer in history,” Belafonte also helped establish hip-hop as a dominant cultural force in the 1980s and spoke out in support of Black uprisings against police brutality in the 2010s in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore.
