Reply #71: Tell it to Dr King who he found to be a deeply moral man... [View All]

[Generic Other]

I liked his vulnerability. It is one thing for us to see Dr. King from the perspective of his enormous strength and the kind of decisions that he made and the things that he said and his fearlessness in the face of the journey, but to know him intimately was to understand how he plagued over the decision-making process, how he was deeply concerned that everything he said and everything that hed do would have ramifications that he hoped would be the right thing in the final analysis.

He was a man who was deeply rooted in moral concerns, and he knew that every time he spoke and talked about mobilizing a movement or a demonstration, that that could perhaps end in taking a life of one of the people who would be a member of the protest or even a severe injury, which was not uncommon. And then to watch him plague over the responsibility of leading people into those kind of responses was something that endeared me to him because I saw him struggle with his humanity.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942465/Harry-Belafonte-Actor-And-Civil-Rights-Icon

List of Belafonte's credentials:

Confidante of MLK, supported his family financially, and bailed him out of Birmingham Jail
Chief Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award (ACLU)
blacklisted by McCarthy
bankrolled the Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee in Mississippi
organized "We Are the World"
dozens of humanitarian awards for work in third world countries
consistently opposed US imperialism in Latin America
Opposed apartheid
Bankrolled Lorraine Hansberry's play "A Raisin in the Sun"

Oh and he recorded "Day-O" the first LP to sell over a million copies.