On the morning of 9 April 1968, some 1,300 mourners crammed into Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church for the funeral of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. At the end of the pew, two rows behind the King’s grieving wife and survivors sat a man in a trim black suit and sunglasses gazing longingly at the casket before the pulpit, like a boat set adrift. That was Harry Belafonte, always in frame any time the civil rights struggle was in focus.
On Tuesday, more than a half century after King was killed by an assassin’s bullet, Belafonte joined his close friend and confidant on the other side of the ancestral plane, dying of congestive heart failure at the age of 96. For as much of an impact he made as an actor and musician, it’s Belafonte’s legacy as an activist that towers like a eighth wonder monument over the current era of lapel-wearing, hashtag virtue signaling. Time and again, when Belafonte rightly could have looked out for No 1, he cannonballed into every social justice movement, protesting against apartheid, pushing for LGBTQ+ equality and condemning the military industrial complex.
