Belafonte Hits All the Right Notes for Armenian Heritage Foundation Talk

He lamented, “We did not have the right to vote, and we had just won the war for others to have that right. I couldn’t make the kind of choices I would like to make because the oppositions of race played a big part and I resented it. I didn’t understand why just based on color there should be such an absence of opportunity and I rebelled against it.” This provoked him along with many others into activism. A second consequence of the war was that some of the people in the armed services inspired his interest in the theater.

Belafonte declared that “I often said that if I had to take one word in the English language to describe my path in life and the word that most enabled me to meet the challenges of life, it would be coincidence. A lot that happened to me I never planned. …. I advantaged the moment.”

When he came out of the military, a high school dropout, he had no skills and therefore he became a janitor’s assistant. He said he tried to become the best janitor that any building in New York City had ever seen, keeping his brass shining bright and his hallways spic and span. By coincidence, he was rewarded for a particular repair with two tickets to the theater. Somewhat unwillingly, he went, and experienced an epiphany. He decided he wanted to be part of this. He took acting classes, and ended up with classmates like Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, Rod Steiger and Tony Curtis.

At nights he went to a jazz club within walking distance of the acting class, and listened to Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis and other great performers. He became familiar with the great saxophonist Lester Young, who invited him to sing some songs to work his way through acting school, and hired him. For a time, he stopped singing and opened a restaurant — a hamburger joint — but though another coincidence, the Village Vanguard was down the street. He started going there night after night to hear singers like Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, who told many stories of human nature through their songs. This inspired Belafonte, who then perfected his own craft and, he said, “worked very hard to find out how to move the human heart, to touch the human mind, with a song. And not only to get the audience to listen to the songs, but, better yet, to inspire them with what those lyrics have to say.”

Belafonte met people in the theater who were activists, and he realized that this was what he wanted to use his craft to do. He said, “Black artists did not have such role models. We did not have big stars then. We are overrun with them now.” As an actor, he said, “I was just an instrument through which things happened, and I enjoyed being that tool.” His idol Paul Robeson would say that artists are the gatekeepers of truth, and Belafonte added, “We are civilization’s moral compass.” He used stage and song for instruction and the presentation of the stories of many different groups.

Despite all the obstacles that Belafonte faced early in life, by a certain point, he had achieved such success that he found his way into the White House, and sat with a young president named John F. Kennedy. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, asked his opinion about civil rights because Belafonte had committed himself to movement and struggle, in the process befriending Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X. Belafonte related that the more radical he became, the more he was rewarded.

Today, he bemoaned, black artists are in large part “absent from social truth and the opportunity to inspire people to say and do things, because we have taken art and turned it into an instrument of hedonistic pleasure. We harvest all the rewards of an audience, their glee and support of us, and we give nothing back.” He concluded that “we must retrieve history and interpret in a way that inspires people to behave in a way that inspires people to be the best of themselves. Part of why I am here tonight — and thanks for the invitation — is to help find the rebel heart.”

After Belafonte took his seat to a standing ovation, Dr. Najarian told the audience that the talk would soon be online and exclaimed, “You have given us, Mr. Belafonte, perspective which we need to hear…I think everybody here tonight has heard your call for action.” She stressed that we who have so many gifts must use our opportunities.

After the event, Najarian said, “Mr. Belafonte has never forgotten what happened to him — but he never spelled it out.  He quietly drew the picture so that the listener understood and by the end we all understood the man and what drives him, even at this age of nearly 90 — the need for justice and vigilance.”

The Najarian Human Rights Lecture committee seeks out major human rights issues that they feel Armenian-Americans should be knowledgeable about and hopefully care about. In Belafonte’s case, Najarian said, “His experience of being ‘the other’ is the same as Armenians in Turkey experienced. Although he didn’t address that issue, he did talk about all injustices and the need for vigilance. That is what my father talked about for years and why the lecture series is dedicated to him. First, he said, watch for injustice because when it happens to one, it happens to us all, and second, never forget what happened.”

For more information on the Najarian Lecture or the Armenian Heritage Park on the Greenway, see www.armenianheritagepark.org.