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Harry Belafonte will launch a racial and social justice festival in October with the inaugural event featuring appearances and performances from actors Chris Rock and Jesse Williams and musicians John Legend and Common. Belafonte announced Thursday that Sankofa.org, his social justice organization, will put on the “Many Rivers to Cross” music and arts festival on Oct. 1-2 in the Atlanta suburb of Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia. The event will promote advocacy and awareness around urgent human rights issues. …

Harry Belafonte has died at the age of 96. Belafonte died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his New York home, his wife Pamela by his side, said Paula M. Witt, of public relations firm Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis. Besides singing, Belafonte was also known for his acting and as a supporter of the civil rights movement. ... Belafonte was also remembered by the founder of Motown. "My friend, Harry Belafonte, was truly a man of cause, conviction and principle," Berry Gordy said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "Besides being a great entertainer, he was a major...

The iconic "Day-O" singer died at his home in New York City, according to longtime spokesperson Ken Sunshine. Harry Belafonte, the effortlessly graceful singer credited with popularizing calypso in the U.S. in the 1950s who then marched at the forefront of the country’s civil rights struggle for half a century, died Tuesday, according to his spokesman. He was 96. Belafonte died of congestive heart failure in New York City, longtime spokesperson Ken Sunshine confirmed to NBC News. Belafonte’s legacy as an arresting, charismatic singer and actor, which was sealed with the release of the landmark album “Calypso” in 1956, spanned...

My phone is telling me that my GPS signal has been lost, which is not the most comforting thing to hear while driving into a thick and winding nothingness in the woods of Fulton County, Georgia, just southwest of Atlanta. I’m searching for Bouckaert Farm, the site of the first annual Many Rivers to Cross festival. The brainchild of Harry Belafonte and his daughter Gina, the two-day festival exists to, once again, connect all facets of the black oral and performance tradition with the fight for social justice. This isn't a new idea; similar concerts have been held many times...

Harry Belafonte - Try To Remember

Members of the University of Michigan Black Student Union said they would have to resort to “physical action” if a list of seven demands issued on Martin Luther King Day are not met within seven days, The Ann Arbor News reported. “If negotiations are not complete we will be forced to do more, beginning to increase valiantly our activism for social progress and take physical actions on the University of Michigan’s campus,” said senior Shayla Scales to a group of students gathered on campus, according to the Ann Arbor News. The seven demands, read aloud by an activist associated with...

Mayoral front-runner Bill de Blasio stood silently by as celebrity booster Harry Belafonte compared the Tea Party-supporting Koch brothers to the Ku Klux Klan inside a Harlem Church on Sunday — then let the inflammatory attack slide as he spoke to the overflow congregation. De Blasio warmly embraced Belafonte after the liberal icon called the Kochs “white supremacists” and “men of evil,” and repeatedly praised the actor during his own speech from the pulpit of the First Corinthian Baptist Church. Belafonte, 87, viciously tore into billionaire energy moguls and political activists Charles and David Koch as he introduced de Blasio...

Appearing on MSNBC, singer and former civil rights icon Harry Belafonte told President Barack Obama how he should take control of the political debate. His answer? Jail opponents. “That there should be this lingering infestation of really corrupt people who sit trying to dismantle the wishes of the people, the mandate that has been given to Barack Obama, and I don’t know what more they want,” Belafonte told race hustler Al Sharpton. “The only thing left for Barack Obama to do is to work like a third world dictator and just put all these guys in jail.”

Harry Belafonte in recent years has been positively Kanye-esque in his outspokenness. The 85-year-old singer — a revered icon in American pop music, the King of Calypso, the resonant voice behind the 1956 classic “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” — has tallied headlines for his frank opinions on matters ranging from U.S. foreign policy to race relations. In 2002, Belafonte likened Secretary of State Colin Powell to a “house slave” for his acquiescence to the invasion of Iraq. He called President George W. Bush “the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world” during a 2006 meeting...

During an appearance on the program of MSNBC’s race-baiter-in-chief Al Sharpton, entertainer Harry Belafonte lashed out at Republicans, saying that their continued presence in Washington, DC constituted an “infection” of sorts. He also told his host that the only thing left for Obama to do with opposition figures who continue to disagree with him was to “Work like a Third World dictator and just put all these guys in jail.” Belafonte’s totalitarian prescription elicited a laugh rather than horror from Sharpton. View video below the jump.

Enlightened Marxist Harry Belafonte was on with pal Al Sharpton this week. His advice for Obama was to imprison opposition like a “third world dictator.”

Communist AARP Impact Award winner Harry Belafonte offers some friendly advice to his ideological compadre, Barack Hussein Obama, on what to do about those who think we should rein in entitlement spending before it inevitably causes total economic collapse: “Work like a Third World dictator and just put all these guys in jail.” We’re not there yet, but we soon will be. The media has managed to put the likes of Belafonte in charge of our country. If they are allowed much longer to consolidate their power, there will be no turning back.

"That there should be this lingering infestation of really corrupt people who sit trying to dismantle the wishes of the people [Republicans, Conservatives, and The Tea Party], the mandate that has been given to Barack Obama, and I don't know what more they want. The only thing left for Barack Obama to do is to work like a 3rd world dictator and just put all these guys in jail." -- Harry Belefonte interviewed by Al Sharpton on MSNBC

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Singer and activist Harry Belafonte will be given this year's Living Legend Award by the Indiana Black Expo in July. Black Expo President and Chief Executive Tanya Bell says the term legend is sometimes casually applied to celebrities, but says Belafonte is genuinely legendary. The 85-year-old performer has pushed for political and social change for years. Belafonte worked closely with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and once bailed him out of jail in Birmingham, Ala. Belafonte also helped fund the inter-racial "Freedom Rides" that challenged Southern segregation, and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington. Indiana...

Liberal radio hosts Tavis Smiley and Cornel West had liberal entertainer Harry Belafonte on their show the other day, and in the interview, Belafonte ripped into President Obama. However, THAT portion of the interview conveniently was CUT when the show went out for distribution. The producer later said that it was for time purposes and that that part of the interview was the least interesting part, since you could hear criticisms of Obama on Fox News any day. Hmmm. . . . A big-name lefty like Belafonte, on a left-wing radio show, slamming Obama for not being leftist enough,...

If Matt Damon is disillusioned with The One, Harry Belafonte is downright dismayed with President Barack Obama’s first term. The Calypso crooner didn’t hold back during a recent radio chat on “Smiley & West,” co-hosted by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, even if a rebroadcast of the program snipped out Belafonte’s most punishing comments, according to The Radio Equalizer. My question is, what legacy will he leave, having the opportunity to serve under such hugely dramatic circumstances and had such a huge impact on the universal state of things … how could he have had such a splendid opportunity to...

WATCH AND ENJOY SEEING THIS MAJOR LEAGUE ASSCLOWN ON LIVE TV

In a "Joy Behar Show" segment scheduled to be aired on HLN Friday, singer Harry Belafonte attacked Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in potentially the most disgraceful manner of any media member to date. While his host and others on the set laughed, Belafonte called Cain "a bad apple" that was "so denied intelligence...I don’t think prayers were created for him" (video follows with transcript and commentary): JOY BEHAR, HOST: Now, let me interrupt you for a second, because now you have someone like Herman Cain. HARRY BELAFONTE: Who? BEHAR: Herman Cain? BELAFONTE: Herman Cain? BEHAR: You know who he...

Full title: Belafonte Attacks Cain: 'A Bad Apple' 'So Denied Intelligence' 'Don’t think prayers were created for him' In a "Joy Behar Show" segment scheduled to be aired on HLN Friday, singer Harry Belafonte attacked Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in potentially the most disgraceful manner of any media member to date. While his host and others on the set laughed, Belafonte called Cain "a bad apple" that was "so denied intelligence...I don’t think prayers were created for him" (video follows with transcript and commentary): JOY BEHAR, HOST: Now, let me interrupt you for a second, because now you have...

Herman Cain has taken with relish to the position of top tier candidate, launching a thousand rhetorical spears in his direction and answering them in record time. Today, it took only a few hours for him to respond to Cornel West and Harry Belafonte who, respectively, called for him to get off the “symbolic crack pipe” and stop being a “bad apple.” On Hannity tonight, Cain accused West of being “out of touch with the real world” and told Belafonte, “I left the Democratic plantation a long time ago.”Cain began addressing his harsh comments against the Occupy Wall Street protesters,...