Harry Belafonte: A Man of Action – Julien’s Auction Mar 6 at 10:00 AM PST in Los Angeles
If Harry Belafonte had never stepped on a concert stage or a movie set, we would probably still know his name as one of the foremost activists of the 20th and 21st centuries. From his earliest days, Belafonte felt a powerful urge to fight injustice wherever he found it, and after he found success and fame as a pop star and leading man, he used his stardom and influence as a force for change for issues such as the American Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War, anti-apartheid, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate change movements.
Belafonte was born in Harlem in 1927 and spent part of his childhood in his mother’s home country of Jamaica. As a young man, he was given tickets to see a performance at the American Negro Theater, which inspired him to study acting and introduced him to his lifelong friend and peer, Sidney Poitier.Belafonte rose to fame in the 1950s as a nightclub singer and gained widespread recognition in 1956 with his debut album Belafonte and the gold-selling Calypso with his classic hits, “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jamaica Farewell,” rivaling Elvis Presley on the charts, and becoming the first single artist to sell more than a million album copies. With his iconic roles in 1954’s Carmen Jones and 1957’s Island in the Sun, he broke barriers to became one of Hollywood’s first Black matinee idols and the first Black performer to win an Emmy with his 1959 special Tonight With Belafonte. Inspired by his hero Paul Robeson, he leveraged his fame to advocate for social justice and became a close ally and confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s and 1960s, where Belafonte became one of the most important voices in the Civil Rights movement, supporting Dr. King by raising bail money for his incarceration in the Birmingham City jail, organizing the 1963 March on Washington, and contributing to the King Center and Southern Christian Leadership Conference after Dr. King’s assassination. Belafonte’s activism extended to younger generations through his coordination of the USA for Africa foundation and the record-breaking 1985 single “We Are the World,” that ultimately made well over 100 million dollars for famine relief in Ethiopia, as well as his significant involvement in the anti-apartheid movement alongside Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu in the 1980s. One of the most honored performers of his generation, Harry Belafonte, an EGOT honoree, received two GRAMMYS®, a TONY®, an EMMY®, as well as a Kennedy Center Honor Award, NAACP Image Award, the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and Motion Picture Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2014 among his distinguished awards.
This collection includes manuscripts, musical instruments, memorabilia and personal objects of the actor/singer/activist’s life and work from his earliest days on New York’s nightclub scene through his breakout musical and theatrical stardom, to his work with Dr. King and the global progressive movement.
