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Speaker 1: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. A co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We take it for granted today that entertainers can, and maybe should speak out for the causes they believe in, political and otherwise. That certainly wasn't the case in the past, but there was a great pioneer in this, the artist-activist Harry Belafonte. He just died at the age of 96. One of the great entertainers of his era, Belafonte had a long string of hits. The Banana Boat Song, Jump In the Line, Jamaica Farewell.

[MUSIC - Harry Belafonte: Jamaica Farewell.]

David Remnick: As well as a career as a leading man in the movies, but at the same time, Belafonte was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement. A friend and confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. A generation later, he worked with Nelson Mandela to help bring down apartheid. In 2016, The New Yorker's Jelani Cobb went to pay him a visit at his office in midtown Manhattan. At the age of 90, Belafonte was still at work with his team, planning the details of an upcoming festival.

Jelani Cobb: Mr. Belafonte's office is like an archive.

Speaker 4: Hello.

Jelani Cobb: Hey, how are you? [crosstalk] When you walk in, there are his gold records that are on the wall. Then, there are posters from some of his films, and you walk through his biography by looking at what's on the walls. When we got there, we talked for a moment with his daughter. She's really heavily involved in working out the logistical details for the festival.

Speaker 4: Now, it's just a matter of pushing our ticket sales, and having bodies on the ground to--

Jelani Cobb: We were waiting for Mr. Belafonte to arrive, and some people walk into a room, and some people make an entrance.

? Speake 5: Sure, Mr. Belafonte.

Harry Belafonte: Let me rush through this verbiage to just express my regrets.

Jelani Cobb: [laughs] At 89-years-old, Harry Belafonte still makes an entrance.

Harry Belafonte: Jumped in feeling--

Jelani Cobb: I jokingly told him that a friend of mine, [crosstalk] when I mentioned that I was going to be talking to him, I asked her if there's anything that I should ask him for her. She said, "Yes, ask him if I can have his phone number." This is someone who was in her 30s. [laughs] He now walks with a cane, and he's thinner than he has been in earlier points of his life. There's still something really very dignified about him. Sir, it's good to see you.

Harry Belafonte: I got to tell you something, I've discovered it's nice to see anybody.

Jelani Cobb: [laughs] With Belafonte, it's like picking up an encyclopedia and flipping through the pages. There's so much information there. There's so much lived experience, like the fact that he owned a burger joint in a village at some point in his career when he was convinced that he wouldn't make it as an actor.

Harry Belafonte: Yes, didn't own it long because I went bankrupt. I didn't charge enough for the hamburgers. [laughter] Most of the people who came to eat in the restaurant were all my friends, acting students, who are also broke and didn't-- Said, "I'll pay you when I get from my next gig." Well, I got a draw full of next gigs, no money.

Jelani Cobb: When you talk to him, [chuckles] he grounds his sense of identity and everything he is. Being the child of two very hardworking, but nonetheless, disadvantaged West Indian immigrants.

Harry Belafonte: As a young person watching my mother because of the dignities of poverty. She came home too often, a broken person. She stood in line down onto the [unintelligible 00:04:09] on Third Avenue to get day work.

Jelani Cobb: This is in Harlem?

Harry Belafonte: Yes.

Jelani Cobb: Something you said that was really interesting, I thought, which is that you said, people think of you as an artist, who became an activist, but you think of yourself as an activist, who became an artist.

Harry Belafonte: Yes. That's exactly correct. When people say, "Well, when did you become an activist?" I just said, "Well, I don't know how you can ask citizens of color, who were born into poverty, 'When did you become an activist?' You really become an activist the day you're born because your whole lust and thrust and effort is to get out of poverty. That requires a lot of work."

Jelani Cobb: One of the more notable things, I think was the story he told about going to Mississippi with Sidney Poitier to bring $100,000 to civil rights activists there. Sidney Poitier is, of course, the great African-American actor, and Harry Belafonte's oldest friend.

Harry Belafonte: I called Sidney Poitier, which I'd been in the habit of doing for us to go for fun and games. He thought this was that kind of call. I called him, and I said, "I got to go down to Greenwood, Mississippi." There was this long pause. "Belafonte, what are you going to Greenwood, Mississippi for?" I spelled it out.

Jelani Cobb: [laughs] On the face of it, it sounds absurd. These are two of the most recognizable figures in Hollywood, in American culture at this point. They are trying to organize a clandestine trip to Mississippi to funnel money to a civil rights organization that can't get it any other way.

Harry Belafonte: When we got to Greenwood, it was one of the darkest nights I've ever remembered. Seeing no electricity at all in this little dirty airport. Just at that moment in a circle around the airfield, these lights went up, and in the distance, there were cars. I was with a guy named Willie Blue. I had said to Sidney, "I think those are the feds." Willie Blue said, "Feds, my ass. That's the Klan."

Jelani Cobb: Wow.

Harry Belafonte: I looked at Sidney. He was not in a humorous mood.

Jelani Cobb: [chuckles] There's this really amazing story, the dynamics between the two of them, driving around in the middle of the night, and being concerned that Klan is going to come get them. It's funny, but it's also poignant. At 89-years-old, it's very easy to just talk about life in the past tense. I think the other reason why I wanted to talk to Mr. Belafonte, was the fact that he is so deeply enmeshed in things that are contemporary and current.

He's not talking about things that happened in 1966, except as a means of shedding light on what happens in 2016. Have you been surprised or dismayed by anything that's happened in our current politics that makes this moment particularly important?

Harry Belafonte: Yes. What really stuns me is the absence of Black presence in the face of the animus that's being heaved upon us. To Gerrymander, voting districts, to change the voting zones, to close down privileges that are given to workers, who Sundays and weekends to be able to vote. This onslaught is all about race. There is no real substantial voice coming out of the Black movement.

Our organizations are fallow. Where is SNCC? Where is SELC? The NAACP? It is the absence of Black consciousness, and our Black response to these things that I think that has ennobled people, like emboldened them like--

Jelani Cobb: Black Lives Matter, I presume.

Harry Belafonte: Well, Black Lives Matters is something we created, but I'm thinking the Donald Trumps of the world. Where's the Black voice? Where's the Black Congress? Where are the committees? Not individuals, but where's the collective? We don't have a labor movement like we had when we did the march on Washington, because labor movement, by and large, belly-upped. There is no labor movement in this country. There's a labor struggle, but there's no labor movement. We have no peace movement.

Jelani Cobb: What do you see the difference between those two things? A labor struggle and a labor movement?

Harry Belafonte: A movement, I think is an organized body with purpose with declared targets, with clarity or philosophy, with an ideology. A struggle is when somebody slaps you, and you try to cover yourself from the blow. There's no underbelly, there's no grit, there's no challenge. We certainly don't have the political leadership. It's not in the White House, it's not in the Congress. I got a welcome--[crosstalk]

Jelani Cobb: Mr. Belafonte was trying to orient himself, I think in time, and in a activist space. He began talking about what he saw as the failures of organizations that were led by his contemporaries, and that they left a void that had to be filled by other groups, and I think he was implying that the rise of things like Black Lives Matter was as a result of-- I think it's probably not too harsh to say, other people dropping the baton.

Harry Belafonte: There is no voice that stands strong in leading some mighty response, some righteous response to what's going on.

Jelani Cobb: I think it's important to recognize also the reverence that a lot of younger people have for Belafonte. John Legend, certainly, is one of those people, and various voices and elements of Black Lives Matter that have been in dialogue with him. There is a cadre of younger, artistic, and activist people who see in Belafonte, a kind of a mentor figure, one of the last vital links to the Civil Rights Movement that much of this work is still inspired by. I'm not sure there's anyone else who quite occupies that niche.

Harry Belafonte: When I listen to young people like Jesse Williams, when I listen to John Legend step in and speak out, I feel rewarded that somewhere along the line, these are the dividends for what we invested. All my colleagues were now dead and gone, because I now understand that I'm officially at the end. I don't want to do it anymore.

Jelani Cobb: It was jarring to see him talk about the fact that we all have a finite amount of time here, and he's thinking very much about what it is that he's done.

Harry Belafonte: I am going to spend the rest of my days, perhaps, being more radical than I ever thought I'd ever be, saying things that are more radical because I no longer want to lead anything or be part. I just want to say the truth, and what it is. There's a lot of stuff to be said, where I go with it, I don't know, but I'll be knocking at your door.

Jelani Cobb: [chuckles] I'm always eager to talk to you, Mr. Belafonte.

[MUSIC - Harry Belafonte: Jamaica Farewell]

David Remnick: The late Harry Belafonte, he spoke with The New Yorker's Jelani Cobb in 2016. That's the Radio Hour for today, see you next time.

[MUSIC -Harry Belafonte: Jamaica Farewell]

Speaker 1: The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Charina Endowment Fund.

[MUSIC - Harry Belafonte: Jamaica Farewell]

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