SH!T WENT DOWN: Harry Belafonte and the Freedom Summer Flight

Belafonte and close friend Sidney Poitier risk their lives to bring needed cash to the movement

Who do you imagine was the first recording artist to sell a million records in a year? I’ll give you a hint. The year was 1956. Did you guess Elvis? Nope. Wasn’t him. It was Harry Belafonte with his album Calypso. But more important to him than his music was using his fame and fortune for the fight for civil rights.

--Sh!t Went Down: Harry Belafonte and the Freedom Summer Flight--

Mr. Belafonte was born in Harlem in 1927 to Jamaican parents, and later lived in Jamaica with his grandmother between the ages of five and thirteen. Prior to Calypso he’d been a successful jazz singer, performing in segregated night clubs, but walked away from it when he realized the music he performed didn’t tell the tales of the struggles of his people the way he wanted to. Inspired by his mentor Paul Robeson, a singer/actor and civil rights activist, Belafonte merged politics and pop culture. The song “Day-O” from Calypso, which many know as “The Banana Boat Song,” was based on a Jamaican folk work song. It tells the tale of men who have labored all through the night, and now comes the dawn and they are exhausted and just want to go home to sleep. For Belafonte, it was a freedom song. Many of his other songs integrated tales of slavery and chain gangs.

Belafonte was close friends with two other prominent Black activists: Sidney Poitier and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Poitier was known to emit a calm defiance to bigotry and oppression as a champion of civil rights, but Belafonte preferred to use his anger to stand up to injustice. One summer, Poitier and Belafonte risked their lives to keep the quest for freedom alive in the town of Greenwood, Mississippi.

The 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi was a signature event in the civil rights movement. Beginning in June, the operation intended to register as many Black voters as possible in the state, which was notorious for barring Black people from voting. That same month, on June 21, three civil rights volunteers working on behalf of the Freedom Summer were murdered by members of the KKK, some of whom worked in law enforcement (read my piece on the subject). By August, the movement was running out of money. Belafonte hatched a dangerous plan to keep the Freedom Summer going.

Belafonte and Poitier had been close friends for years, and would remain so for the rest of their lives. Knowing that the Klan was likely to murder anyone trying to assist the movement—Mississippi had more lynchings of Black people than any other state—Harry said well shit they might be brash enough to murder one famous Black man, but certainly they wouldn’t murder two.

Oh yes they would. Poitier had recently won a best actor Oscar for his performance in Lilies of the Field, and Belafonte remained one of the top recording artists of the time. Those alabastards didn’t give a fuck. Skin tone was all that mattered to them.

Belafonte was well known for using his wealth to bankroll both Dr. King and the civil rights movement. He hired a little Cessna to fly himself and Poitier into a small airport near Greenwood, bringing with them $70,000 in cash.

The moment they landed the pilot, knowing how dangerous the situation was, said it’s fuckity bye time and wheels up noped right out of there God be with you best of luck. A car was waiting for the pair. They climbed in and saw headlights across the airfield. Harry said those must be federal agents. The driver said yeah no. That’s the Klan. They wanna kill us.

Rather than immediately flee, the driver charged his vehicle straight at the KKK to create confusion, then swerved away toward Greenwood. The Klan gave chase. During the car chase vehicles repeatedly rammed the car with Belafonte and Poitier in the back seat, attempting to push it off the road, but the driver kept ahead of them. Eventually a convoy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the four civil rights organizations running the Freedom Summer, drove out to meet the vehicle carrying the famous pair. The pursuing clown cars—oops I mean Klan cars—gave up the chase.

They were escorted to a dance hall in Greenwood to a cheering crowd. Belafonte then took the bag filled with $70,000, worth over ten times that today, and dumped it on a table. The crowd cheered again; the cash was vital to keeping the Freedom Summer alive. Then Belafonte began to sing, adapting the lyrics from “Day-O” to “Freedom! Free-dom! Freedom come, an’ it won’t be long.”

That night, the famous friends shared a small bed under armed guard as Klan members lurked nearby. The pair even had a good-natured argument over who got to sleep further away from the window in case those racist ratfucks started shooting.

Harry Belafonte remained active in the civil rights movement the rest of his life, and was a vocal critic of the policies of both George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

Belafonte made his final journey to freedom just this past week, dying on April 25, 2023, at the age of 96.

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