Harry Belafonte - United States
Amy Goodman interviews Harry Belafonte,
March 20th, 2006
After Criticizing Bush, Harry
Belafonte Says he was Disinvited from Delivering Eulogy at the
Coretta Scott King Funeral
AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, Democracy Now!
interviewed legendary singer, actor and humanitarian, Harry Belafonte,
at the Great Hall at Cooper Union here in New York City. He revealed
the story behind why he was dis-invited from the funeral of Coretta
Scott King, even though he was a close friend of both Coretta
and her late husband, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. According
to Harry Belafonte, the King family originally invited him to
help eulogize Coretta Scott King, but the family rescinded the
invitation after President Bush announced he would attend the
funeral. Just weeks earlier, Harry Belafonte had made international
headlines when he spoke out against President Bush during a trip
to Venezuela to meet with President Hugo Chavez.
HARRY BELAFONTE: No matter what the greatest
tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George
W. Bush, says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands,
but millions of the American people - millions - support your
revolution, support your ideas, and yes, expressing our solidarity
with you.
.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Harry Belafonte speaking in Venezuela earlier
this year. In a moment, we'll hear him discuss the controversy
surrounding Coretta Scott King's funeral, but we begin with Harry
Belafonte talking about how artists are punished for speaking
out.
HARRY BELAFONTE: It is in culture that
I think we come to know one another. And we are in countries murdering,
killing, destroying people, and we have never heard their song.
And perhaps if we had and perhaps if we would listen to their
song, we might find that we are not capable of sending off our
sons and daughters to murder.
It's a great place to be, in the arts.
It's a gift that's very hard to define. So many great practitioners
of art have already said so much, but there is a spirit in it.
There is an essence in it, that if it's applied to the human heart,
if it's applied to inspire people to trust, I think the rewards
from it are forever.
One of the things that was a mechanism
and a device used to cruelly punish artists who would speak out
was to cut them off from their livelihood. They did it to Paul
Robeson. They wouldn't give him a passport. Carnegie Hall wouldn't
hire him or give - or rent him the hall. Many of the places that
he had sung, where people loved him, were closed to him for a
long period of time. But when that case was fought and won in
the courts, he was nourished again, because everybody in the world
was waiting for him.
And what has permitted me to sustain my
own life in the midst of so much cruelty and degradation -- I've
lost a lot from those who control culture, those who will not
let my song be in the environment of their sponsorship -- just
my remarks on President Bush, that he's a terrorist, I lost a
lot of work, even in universities, not even singing, just fraternities
and students that have invited me to come to speak. Many of those
doors in those universities were closed to me, because those who
sit on the board and the board of trustees said we are displeased
with what he said. He'll have no place in this institution. And
if he does, you'll no longer have our support. So the president
and the dean becomes frightened and becomes concerned. And it's
easier to let go than it is to stand against the oppressor.
AMY GOODMAN: Who cancelled your engagements?
HARRY BELAFONTE: A university in Virginia,
a company called [Eye Tech]. There is a difference between Eye
Care, the foundation, and [Eye Tech] - a company made up of doctors
and scientists in the world of ophthalmology.
I was supposed to have gone to Chicago,
and they said, "No, we have to withdraw the contract."
That experience is not uncommon.
But I say that there is a place when one
has to really make a choice, and sometimes the choice is not easy
until you make it, and then you understand the rewards that are
there from the choice you made, which may have at the beginning
frightened you or threatened you or intimidated you.
AMY GOODMAN: Harry Belafonte here on Democracy
Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. We spoke with
him on Saturday night on the 10th anniversary of Democracy Now!
at Cooper Union in New York City. I was speaking with him along
with Juan Gonzalez, co-host on Democracy Now! and Pacifica Radio
station WBAI's program director, Bernard White. We asked Harry
Belafonte to explain what happened, why he didn't attend the funeral
of Coretta Scott King.
AMY GOODMAN: Harry, I have a quick question,
talking about the children and talking about Dr. King in Birmingham.
Coretta Scott King recently died, and it was quite a remarkable
funeral. Over 10,000, 15,000 people came out, four presidents,
many senators. Reverend Joseph Lowery, while President Bush was
sitting right on the dais, talked about weapons of misdirection
right here, and President Carter talked about Dr. Martin Luther
King and Coretta Scott King being spied on, and Maya Angelou stood
up and said, "I speak here for Harry Belafonte and others."
Did you try to go to Coretta Scott King's funeral?
HARRY BELAFONTE: What had happened was
that when Dr. King came on one of his very first trips to New
York, he was in Harlem, and a deranged black woman stabbed him,
and he was -- the blade was just millimeters away from his heart,
and to remove the instrument, his life was in jeopardy, and it
was a very delicate operation. And it was then that I understood
that -- after seeing Dr. King and talking to him, his first concern
was what would happen to his family. And I said to myself, our
leader cannot be concerned about that. That burden should not
be on his shoulders. There are other aspects of the burden that
would be his in relation to it, but not that. So that it was demanded
and responded to that forever the welfare of his family would
never be in jeopardy with him being at the helm of the movement,
and we brought resources, and it was my task to direct all that,
watching the kids grow, put money aside for their studies, to
take care of Coretta, to make sure she had every convenience at
her disposal to go, come while her husband was incarcerated.
So the intimacy of that experience was
something that I had become accustomed to, and when Dr. King was
murdered, I was in Atlanta in their home, and we separated ourselves
from others who were there in the living room, and she said, "Would
you come with me." We went into the bedroom, and she said,
"Help me select the clothes that I must -- we must dress
him in." And it was a very private and a very remarkable
thing to - the intimacy of it with her. And as we were selecting
the suits and the shirt and the tie and laying it out, she sat
on the bed, and she kind of - a place where she had slept so often
with her husband, and all those memories. And I said, "What
is it?" She says, "You know, I'm worried about where
this is all going. I'm worried about the nation, the rage, the
anger, and I need to know what to do." And we talked for
a second. Then I said to her, "You know, at this very moment
in Memphis, thousands of sanitation workers are on hold, because
Dr. King was supposed to have been there tomorrow to lead that
movement and to speak to the people, and before your husband,
our leader, is put in his grave, if you have the will and the
capacity to go down there tomorrow and stand up before those workers
and let the world know that the movement has not been interrupted,
that the process continues, and that all of us, as strong or as
weak as we may be, will step into the breach and do what must
be done." And she did, and she went down, and she spoke,
and we came right back.
Now, all through the years since then,
the building of the King Center, many choices of things that she
made to do, because she was in her own right very involved for
Dr. King. She was one of the - she was very, very committed to
the peace movement, and as a matter of fact, in Europe, during
the assassin-- the missile crisis and whatnot, we gave -- we put
on a peace concert for 250,000 Germans in Cologne, mostly students,
and the moment when Coretta King -- I called and asked her to
come to speak. It would mean a lot to the young people there.
She came, and I have never, ever heard a declaration of approval
like those young German youth did when she came, and she had a
sense of her own power. She had a sense of her own capacity to
bring influence and to be revered for the work she did.
When she died, none of us knew that she
was in Mexico, that she had -- I knew that she was ill. I knew
about the heart attack, the defibrillation and the stroke. But
- and I knew she had cancer, but I thought the cancer was contained,
and when she went to Mexico, she was there with her children,
and I got the news completely without knowing any of the details,
so for a few days we didn't know what was happening. Where is
she? Who's bringing her home? When is the funeral? When is the
this, when is the that?
And finally, I left a call -- I left a
message on the phones of the children, saying, "Please give
me a call. I know this is a difficult moment, but there are things
that must be done, and I would like to help if I can." I
was then called a day later and told that, yes, that it was on
that Tues-- this was on a Friday, Friday evening, that the funeral
was going to take place that Tuesday, and that it would start
at noon, and that with all the people that were being invited,
that it was -- I was to be one of these people delivering the
eulogy, and that my time would be at somewhere around 12:30 or
1:00, and I said, "Fine." And knowing this, I began
to put my thoughts together.
That Saturday, Bush declared he was coming.
He would be there. That Sunday, I began to change my speech, not
to be rude or to be attacking, but to integrate this moment into
what needed to be said. And then, that Monday morning, I got a
call, and I was told that the invitation that had been extended
to me had been pulled. I was uninvited. A woman by the name of
Skinner and a Reverend by the name of Lawrence was the one who
called me to tell me that I was uninvited, and when that call
came, I called and spoke to one of the children. They said, these
are the events, and I need to be counseled as to how this has
come about, and I was told that I would get a call shortly, and
it would all be clarified. And then, when the final call came,
it was -- they were sorry, but the invitation - the withdrawing
of the invitation would stand and that if I came down, they would
find a place for me in the church, but I would not speak. And
I did not go at all. I did not know how to deal with that.
What struck me was on the day of the ceremony, I saw how the altar
was adorned. I saw who sat there, and as the camera moved about,
I saw who was sitting in the audience, and I saw all of the power
of the oppressor represented on the stage, and all those who fought
for the victories that this nation was experiencing and enjoying
sat in the outhouse, sat out in the field, sat removed, and if
it not been for Lowery, for President Carter and for Maya Angelou,
we would have had no voice and no representation at all.
Some ministers who were quite angry at
all of this said, "Come on down here. Let's -- let's -- We
have to talk to the press," and I said, "Talk to the
press about what?" "About this. We cannot let it stand."
I said, "I don't think that's appropriate. These are the
children of my friend. These are the children of the movement.
Where did we let them get caught? Why was Bernice giving this
kind of sermon? How did you let Reverend Long become the minister
of choice? Why wasn't it at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr.
King preached? And before we go public and begin to vent our anger,
let us understand what role we played in this capitulation that
has led to this moment, and let us try first to repair it rather
than to go into public discourse.
When do we sit in a circle of healing?
When we begin to talk about getting back to where we lost stride.
How do we fix this? Not how do we play the vanity game, and get
off on going public and talking about how I was crucified. You
know, it's what it is, and there is a way in which we have to
do this that not only prevents - I don't know that there'll be
another moment quite like that, because Dr. King and Malcolm X
and Fannie Lou Hamer, folks like that were so rare that to be
a part of the final ceremony of their departure is a rare moment
in history, but I think that it goes along with what I have been
saying here. What role have we played in letting all this happen?
Where were we? What were we doing that had us so distracted? How
can it be this way? How did you priests and ministers let the
evangelical rightwing Christian forces co-opt the greater truth
about Christianity and the philosophy of liberation? And how did
you all let that happen, and where are your voices in opposition
publicly?
Everybody has a part in this. Everybody
has something to look at, and I think it is a collective experience,
and that's why I think rather than sitting here drifting, we've
got to talk about this, not just where we failed and where you
failed, and we've got to come out of this discourse and this discussion,
not just talking about it but saying, "Here's where we go,"
and take courage in the fact that we can turn this around, because
the truth of the matter is we are the only ones that can turn
this around. Nothing and no one else can do it. Nothing.
AMY GOODMAN: Harry Belafonte, describing his dis-invitation from
giving a eulogy at the funeral of Coretta Scott King.
Heroes
Home Page