Fiery Belafonte focuses on injustice
Harry Belafonte gives the keynote address at Duke Chapel.
Entertainer and human-rights activist Harry Belafonte said Sunday that there is moral equivalence between the actions of the Sept. 11 hijackers and the American-launched war in Iraq.
"Killing is our easiest tool," Belafonte said, addressing about 1,800 people packed in the cavernous gothic chapel at Duke University for a commemoration honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "When you have a president that has led us into a dishonorable war, who has killed tens of thousands, many of them our own sons and daughters, what is the difference between those who would fly airplanes into buildings, killing 3,000 innocent Americans? ... What is the difference between that terror and other terrors?"
A confidant of the slain civil rights leader, Belafonte, 78, said the nation had come a long way in his lifetime. But, he added, the injustices like those fought during the civil rights movement continue -- the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, the torture of terrorism suspects, those imprisoned without trial by the U.S. military and the recent videotape of three Florida police officers handcuffing a 5-year-old girl.
"Dr. King lives. His spirit lives," Belafonte said, praising how King changed the country through peace rather than violence. "These are the things that are left to be done."
He then paraphrased President Theodore Roosevelt as saying that when those in the seat of national power abuse the U.S. Constitution, it is the responsibility of good citizens to rise up in protest.
Belafonte's appearance at Duke, a private university that once closed its doors to blacks, came little more than a week after comments he made on a trip to Venezuela grabbed national headlines. Standing next to Hugo Chavez, that country's socialist leader, Belafonte called Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world."
On Sunday, Belafonte said that statement had caused him "some trouble" but that he would continue to speak out against "oppressors" who are the "true enemies" of the poor.
"When Katrina happened, this great tragedy, and our people called out in misery and fear, our government didn't respond," Belafonte said. He then recounted how the Venezuelan president offered to send doctors and low-cost heating oil to help America's poor -- an offer, Belafonte said, that was "arrogantly dismissed" by President Bush.
The more than 90-minute speech drew standing applause. In its racial diversity, the audience was itself a testament to King's legacy. They sat sandwiched in the pews and standing shoulder-to-shoulder against the walls. Some old enough to remember King, who was assassinated 38 years ago this April, brought their children and grandchildren to hear Belafonte.
Best known for his calypso-inspired music, including the "Day-O" song, Belafonte recounted how he grew up in poverty in Harlem, the oldest son of a Jamaican-immigrant mother. A high school dropout, he rose to win an Emmy, a Tony and the National Medal of Arts. He served as a cultural adviser for the Peace Corps and more than 20 years as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund.
Belafonte first met King in 1956, just as the singer's breakthrough album was climbing the charts. He was 26 and King was 24.
"We were supposed to talk for 40 minutes, and we talked for 5 hours," Belafonte recalled. "I knew the course of my life had been set and who I would serve."
Belafonte would became such an outspoken supporter that King would later call the popular singer a "tactical weapon" in the struggle for equality. It was Belafonte that raised King's $50,000 bail when he was jailed in Birmingham, Ala.
Belafonte said it was no coincidence that King was silenced just as he was launching his Poor People's Campaign -- a fight for economic equality.
"We have the largest prison population in the world, and the largest group in incarceration are by color African-American," Belafonte said.
While unity prevailed inside the chapel, Belafonte's message seemed to mean different things to those filing out.
Asked what they took away from the commemoration, several whites praised King and Belafonte's place in history. Some blacks, young and old, said the singer's words resonated more directly with what they see today.
"I definitely see the parallels," said Kara King, a Duke medical student from Columbia, S.C.
David Mhummead, a former paratrooper and Vietnam veteran, said he appreciated what Belafonte said about the Bush administration.
"Katrina opened the door to the real picture," said Mhummead, 72. "And the war in Iraq is another way of seeing their true colors. This war is unjust, and the whole world sees it."
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