NEW YORK — Carmen Berkley, a strategist with a Seattle-based foundation advocating equity and racial justice, remembers meeting Harry Belafonte a decade ago when she was a youth.
She’d gone to Florida to attend a sit-in protest that other young Black activists had staged at the Capitol over the death of Trayvon Martin, a Black teen fatally shot in 2012 by a resident of a gated community who decided he looked suspicious. Berkley recalls “this magical moment” when Belafonte showed up to encourage the demonstrators.
“He gave us hope. He reminded us that we are important, that we are powerful and we deserved freedom and Justice in our lifetimes,” said Berkley, vice president of strategy and impact at Inatai Foundation. “There is no one like Mr. B,” she added. “Humble and kind, generous and focused, and a true advocate for artists, advocates and all of the communities who want to get free.”
Belafonte, who died Tuesday at age 96, was a close friend and ally of the Rev. Martin Luther King and stepped back from a lucrative and path-breaking career in music and acting to dedicate himself to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. But his legacy extended well beyond his generational peers. Over the past half century, for full-time activists and for artists and celebrities anxious to do more than entertain, Belafonte has endured as a role model, mentor and scold, a village elder dedicated to advising young people on how to advocate for their rights and to reminding those who didn’t meet their potential to change minds.
