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| 67 CHAPTER SIX Harry Belafonte, Janet Levison, and a Totally Different “Kennedy” B esides Stanley Levison, another notable person who met Martin Luther King Jr. for the first time in 1956 was Harry Belafonte. King phoned the rising calypso star in New York, and according to Belafonte’s memoirs, said, simply: “You don’t know me, Mr. Belafonte, but my name is Martin Luther King Jr.” Belafonte, astonished, replied: “Oh, I know you. Everybody knows you.” King’s unpretentiousness was neither unusual nor misplaced. Although he had electrified the Montgomery community with his Holt Street Baptist Church charge to arms regarding the boycott (a presentation for which he had twenty minutes to prepare), been arrested twice, had his home bombed, and was the undisputed leader of the remarkable and unprecedented campaign, he really did not gauge his already global prominence. The distinguished 68| CHAPTER SIX Reverend James Lawson, ensconced in India following his own prison term for refusing to serve in the Korean War, read about King in a newspaper and was exhilarated by the notion of black people taking on the white establishment in a nonviolent, Gandhian action that, in Lawson’s mind, directly mirrored the Mahatma’sstunningcrusadetoremovetheBritishfromcolonialIndia.Lawson, a black Methodist with strict and austere disciplines, would eventually ally with King in a number of efforts, including, and finally, King’s participation in the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike that cost King his life in 1968.1 Stanley Levison had told King: “You should get in touch with Belafonte. He could be very valuable in our work.” King was headed for New York to raise funds for the Montgomery boycott, which was moving along but was desperately short of cash. Stanley knew that Belafonte was atypical among Hollywood celebrities. Belafonte was a man whose talent and charisma were matched by his zeal—his anger—regarding the historic oppression of blacks by the white establishment. Like Libby Holman’s friend, Joshua White, the entertainer was not wrapped up in his own hard-won celebrity. He would take unparalleled physical risks himself in his proactive, very present participation in a number of protests, most notably the Montgomery-to-Selma march in 1965 to secure voting rights for African Americans. As Clarence Jones told me, “Martin was not always smitten with the Hollywood lifestyle of consumption and superficiality, but he found a genuine confidante and constant resource in Harry.” Belafonte was well aware of the preacher who was already intoning his refrainfrompulpitsandcommunitylecterns,“Therecomesatimewhenpeople get tired . . .” Unlike other media luminaries, Belafonte was not drenched with vanities,nordidheconfinehisrecordingartistrytopopandhistrademarkWest Indian rhapsody. His music was sung in the lyrics of his political activism and international humanitarianism—from the Freedom Rides of Mississippi to the 1963 March on Washington to the famine fields of Rwanda. He experienced racial discrimination firsthand, often barred from performing in southern clubs and theaters. He was blacklisted by the McCarthyists, hounded by fbi surveillance,andtrackedbyKlanmembersandtheirsmall-townpoliceacolytes. BELAFONTE, LEVISON, AND KENNEDY| 69 He never disassociated his fame from his outrage and, in time, became a key underwriter of King’s and the civil rights movement in general. Before encountering King, Belafonte already admired and sat at the feet of black militants such as W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. He maintained a long friendship with, and admiration for, Eleanor Roosevelt, about whom he said: “She [invited] me directly to link up with her for her cause. She was very interested in the development of people in the black community, particularly children.” When King called Belafonte, the preacher asked if they could meet at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. King was en route to recruit other ministers to the cause. It was agreed that they would talk following King’s sermon. Belafonte wrote about the first encounter: When I met him in a reception room, I was struck by his sense of calm. He stood surrounded by at least two hundred well-wishers, yet he seemed unaffected by the crowd, at peace with himself, as if he were standing alone. . . . I felt an unmistakable edge of excitement meeting him. “I’m so delighted you were able to find the time to meet,” he said, looking up at me. “I can’t tell you what it will mean to me and the movement if I can just make you aware of what we’re trying to do.”2 Therewerephotographersandgawkersinthearea.Kingpolitelymotioned them away and led Belafonte to the basement, which was used as the Sunday school class. Belafonte recalls that the...

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