The Rich Legacy of Harry Belafonte’s Art and Activism

“Following Harry” is available on Amazon, Apple and other digital platforms starting Oct.13. For more info see: https://www.followingharry.org/.

Born in 1927 in Harlem, Grammy, Tony, Emmy and Oscar award-winner Harry Belafonte grew up in Jamaica and helped popularize Caribbean music in America. His 1956 album “Calypso” – which included Belafonte’s signature song “Day-O (Banana Boat Song)” – hit number one on Billboard’s charts and became the first album by a solo artist to sell a million albums. During the 1950s he co-starred in “Carmen Jones,” Otto Preminger’s 1954 big screen adaptation of Bizet’s opera, and went on to act in 2006’s “Bobby” about RFK and Spike Lee’s 2018 “BlacKkKlansman.” 

But as director Susanne Rostock reveals, Belafonte’s greatest role wasn’t onstage, onscreen or in the recording studio, but as an activist. Her “Following Harry” reveals that until his death in 2023 at the age of 96, the world-famous performer parlayed his fame and fortune into the tireless pursuit of social justice. At one point in the 90-minute documentary, the killing of Trayvon Martin triggers an outraged Belafonte to muse, “The season on race and murdering young Black men is open.”

In this conversation, Rostock discusses how Belafonte was an avatar and exemplar of using celebrity not to advance one’s own career, bank account and ego, but the causes that really matter. Rostock was interviewed in New York City via Zoom. 

Truthdig: What’s the difference between your first documentary about Belafonte, 2011’s “Sing Your Song,” and “Following Harry”?  

Susanne Rostock: The biggest difference is that this is more of a verite film. It’s the last 12 years of Harry Belafonte’s life being captured. “Sing Your Song” is more of a historical film. There are sections where it’s Harry during those two years of his life in that present. But it’s more a historical telling of his life. This is more you’re living with Harry. It could be called “Living with Harry.” [Chuckles.] That’s really the feeling of the film. You’re joining him on his mission with the little time he has left to do as much of the work as he can do. As he says toward the end of the film: “I’ve left you a trail of crumbs. Pick them up. If not, do something better.” That’s the challenge the film gives you.   

TD: Since this is your second film about Harry Belafonte, can you tell us a bit about him? 

SR: First of all, Harry was an incredible artist who brought together so many cultures in his music and actually had a way of reframing the Black performer. So, he was very important in that respect. But what’s less known about him was his role he played in the civil rights movement, where he was a very close friend to Martin Luther King, and was able to raise a lot of money for the movement, give Martin Luther King a space of quiet and privacy to write his speeches.

Harry brought in so many celebrities into the movement to help support it. If you look at the March on Washington [in 1963], Marlon Brando and Paul Newman and on and on, they were all brought in by Harry. So, Harry could help spread the word in a community that could really influence.

Harry was the one who convinced John Kennedy to actually acknowledge Martin Luther King; he was not supporting him at all. He was the one who brought Robert Kennedy to the South to experience what poverty is really like. You can see in the footage that was filmed of that, you can see the light go on in Robert Kennedy’s head, the tears that he cried over being with children who hadn’t had food in days. He really experienced the poverty. Harry was very, very important in that period in history.

And he continued to be — but very much under the radar. So, when I made the first film about Harry, that was about his early life up to 2009, when we got to the present in my first film about him, he looks around the world and sees there’s so much work to be done. He expresses that, “I can retire now [and rest] on my laurels” – he was in his 80s – “but there’s too much work to be done. And what do we do now?” So that’s how [“Sing Your Song”] ends. I always wanted to answer that question.

Then Harry turned to me and said, “I’m moving into a new office. Would you like to join me?” So, I did. I had already gotten to know Harry well, but it gave me the opportunity to spend every day with him for years, in our shared office [in Manhattan]. It was so wonderful, because there’d be so many activists and artists who would come into the office to seek Harry’s advice. I started thinking, not only do I want to answer that question, “What do we do now?” but I wanted to be sure that Harry, as a human, as a voice of reason, inspiration and hope would be preserved and shared, because there were so few people like him, anywhere. So, I wanted to capture that.

TD: What are some of the causes Belafonte was very involved with late in life?

Trayvon Martin was murdered [in 2012] and Harry hit the ground running and some real organizing was happening in the office. He got involved in so many movements. The [2017] Women’s March was created in our office. And you just see how movements are built, how activists are communicating with each other, how they’re feeling, what drives people to devote their life to other humans.

SR: Belafonte attended a graduation ceremony at Sing Sing prison. 

Multiple. Years and years of graduation ceremonies. He was very involved in mass incarceration. He was very involved in juvenile incarceration. He actually, during the first film I made, started an organization called The Gathering for Justice, which was dealing with juvenile incarceration, and trying to eradicate that. 

He was very involved in school shootings. In gun control. In feminism. In art — in using art; he always said: “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. Civilization’s radical voice.” He believed in the power of art, and supporting young people in the arts and providing spaces for them. Especially inner city kids — spaces for them in the countryside, to come and breathe and create together.

TD: What was Belafonte’s involvement with famine in Africa and “We Are the World”?

SR: There’s been a wonderful film made about that [2024’s “The Greatest Night in Pop”]. Harry saw what was going on in Ethiopia and he said, “We have to do something.” The easiest thing to do – and he talks about it in “Following Harry” — is to create a song, a song that everyone will sing. To bring attention and help raise money. So, he got together with Quincy Jones, and they started bringing in all those artists to come and record it. If you watch the film about it, you see at the recording session, at the end, you see many artists all turn around and sing “Day-O” to Harry. It’s a touching scene.

TD: Let’s discuss some of the notables in “Following Harry” and their connection to Belafonte. Angela Davis?

SR: Angela Davis and Harry go way back to the civil rights movement. Harry calls, she always shows up. She came to a very important event for this organization, Sankofa, that’s run by Gina Belafonte, Harry’s daughter. They called together Many Rivers to Cross, and that was on the eve of the 2016 election. Angela Davis came to speak to get people to vote. She said: “Get out and vote. We’ll have our revolution after.”    

TD: Gloria Steinem?

SR: Gloria and Harry go back to the beginning, too. Harry was a feminist. They supported each other greatly.

TD: Linda Sarsour?

SR: Linda Sarsour is part of the Gathering for Justice. That’s how Harry met her. As you can see in the film, they had a very warm relationship, they talked a lot about Palestine and issues that were close to her heart, including just general human rights for all of us. He was an advisor, Harry wrote the preface to her [2020] book “We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance.” 

TD: Dolores Huerta?

SR: They were all part of that wonderful, exhilarating period in history when everybody was out there fighting. So, Dolores, they were comrades.

TD: Kerry Kennedy? 

SR: Harry had a very, very close relationship to the Kennedys. So, he’d known Kerry from when she was a little girl. There’s a scene in the film where Kerry asks Harry to come and speak to her, because she was very concerned, during the Women’s March. She was very concerned about what was happening with Trump. When he comes to her home, she shows Harry a photograph that she has framed on the wall and a letter from her father, Robert Kennedy, to her, saying: “This is a picture of you when you were a little girl and it was an incredibly important day in history, not only because you came to see me, but because three Black students were allowed into the university for the first time”… Harry’s so moved by that. They have a longstanding family history.

TD: When I met Harry, he talked a lot about Paul Robeson. 

SR: Paul Robeson was Harry’s mentor. He was the person that Harry admired most in life. And Paul Robeson was an artist who used his art to fight. That’s really what gave Harry the impetus to do that. Paul Robeson was a magnificent singer. He stood up – he used his celebrity to stand up and to point out what’s going on, the wrongs of humanity.

TD: Was Belafonte some kind of a socialist?

SR: [Laughs.] I don’t think Harry identified himself as anything that way. I would say he was a socialist. It depends on how you define socialism. It’s a funny question. He didn’t put a label on himself. Yes, I would say he believed in socialism. It’s the right thing.   

TD: In the 1950s when Belafonte burst onto the national scene, he was a huge musical star. Harry was certainly photogenic, charismatic and a gifted actor. But he only appeared in five feature films during the ’50s and none in the 1960s. Why?   

SR: That’s a big mystery. It’s not from lack of wanting to act. He was a wonderful actor. He started his own [production company], HarBel, so that he would have the films to act in. It wasn’t a moneymaker. You should read his autobiography, maybe he explains that better why. But I think it was a little bit of a mystery to him, too. He certainly had the veneer of stardom, a leading man, beautiful, a good actor. 

Parts weren’t being given to him. Sidney Poitier got all of the — how many Black actors were there at that time?

TD: And how many good roles for Blacks were there that weren’t stereotypical?

SR: Exactly. You know? I’m sure he turned down a lot, where he’d just be a thug or something. 

TD: What did Belafonte mean when he said: “Artists are the greatest changemakers the universe has ever invented”?

SR: It goes back to the quote [attributed to Paul Robeson] I was using about “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. Civilization’s radical voice.” Because I know that goes to all the arts, I’ll just isolate it to film. You can sit in a room for 90 minutes and watch a film and have your whole worldview change. Because you’ve experienced something; you feel like you’ve lived through it. The same with music. Music unifies people, gets people together, to talk to each other, to recognize each other. Art has that power; it’s a universal power that can speak across language and across beliefs. It’s the unifying effect of art.

TD: What is Harry Belafonte’s legacy as an artist and activist?

SR: His legacy is that we have to act, and we have to act with love. We all want to enjoy the universe. We all have the same wishes. And it’s oppression that gets in the way. And we have to fight oppression with love. He was very much a believer in nonviolent protest. So, Harry’s legacy is that you have to stand up, you have to speak up, you can’t ignore what’s going on. You owe it to each other, and that we have to fight to recognize our common humanity.