My Song

by Harry Belafonte

  I knew I’d stay on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The neighborhood was as much my home as the apartment, with its crowded markets and Jewish delicatessens and Chinese-Cuban and Italian restaurants, its jumble of students and pensioners, actors and eccentrics. Pam and I found a newly renovated space in a grand old building barely a stone’s throw from where I’d lived for nearly fifty years. The new space was modest, but joyous—perfect for the rhythms of this new life of ours. Julie found a new place nearby, too; the neighborhood was as much her home as mine. Sometimes these days I see her walking her dog on Broadway, and on occasion we stop and chat. The legal wrangling is behind us; we have grandchildren to discuss; life goes on.

  In the wake of my divorce, I still had more comforts than most people on the planet. But no Town Car sits idling outside my door. I’ve rediscovered the New York City transportation system, the buses and subways, where I have found delight in studying all those faces, with so many gradations of skin tone. The classes seem more mixed than when I last rode those creaky cars with any daily regularity: the young Wall Street workers, the tired secretaries with their iPods, the happy students from public and private schools, the young and the old swaying together. Sometimes I tote up, in my mind, how much money I gave over the years to the movement and other causes. How would my life be now if I had it all back? More hedonistically comfortable, perhaps … but not better. At the very end, what consolations do we have or really need? Surely not vast sums of money smothering our generosity toward the needy and the poor.

  In my late seventies, I was slowing down, but when the right political cause tugged at me, I still jumped in. And in my choice of causes, I remained not just liberal but an unabashed lefty. I was still drawn to idealistic left-wing leaders, or at least left-wing leaders who seemed to embody the true ideals of socialism. And so it was hardly surprising to my family and friends that in early 2006 I led a delegation to meet with Venezuela’s fiery socialist president, Hugo Chávez.

  To me, Chávez seemed far more complex than the swaggering lout he was portrayed as in the Western media, even The New York Times. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina the previous summer, Chávez had personally offered to help with disaster relief. Venezuela had had more than its share of natural calamities, and had learned some valuable lessons. Yet President Bush had given Chávez the back of his hand—an unstatesmanlike gesture, to say the least. Chávez had also just declared that he would make Venezuelan heating oil available at cut-rate prices to needy New Englanders for the coming winter, after President Bush had ignored their pleas for help as oil prices rose. (Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, Bobby’s oldest son, had stepped in and embraced the offer as head of a regional nonprofit called Citizens Energy.)

  I knew how controversial Chávez was. But since coming to power in 1999, he had achieved something that Bush seemed to have no interest in doing in America: He’d cut the ranks of his country’s unemployed in half. And for that, Chávez was a lot more popular in Venezuela than Bush was in the United States. I suspected that, as with every left-wing leader who became a target of U.S. foreign policy, there was another side to his story, and I wanted to hear it. I also had a proposition for him.

  Along with condemning Chávez, the U.S. government had been doing all it could to eradicate Venezuela’s coca fields, to stanch the northward flow of cocaine. Chávez had asked why the United States couldn’t instead put its money into training Venezuelan farmers to cultivate another profitable crop. That caught my fancy. I started thinking about what the best alternative crop might be, and how Venezuela and the United States might both benefit from harvesting and trading it. I sought out Ralph Paige and leaders of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Epes, Alabama—the group representing thousands of black farmers in the Deep South who had on several occasions come to me for help. To my friends in Epes, the answer was obvious: coffee. For various reasons, Brazil and Colombia dominated the South American coffee business. What if we helped Venezuela expand its own coffee industry by providing a new U.S. distribution network for it? And what if that U.S. network could be set up and overseen by some of America’s toughest but most economically challenged citizens: former members of the Bloods and the Crips and other inner-city youth groups?

  Father Greg Boyle, a legendary white Irish Catholic priest, who for decades has worked with L.A.’s gangs, had made me see the potential here. He’d started a Homeboy Bakery in downtown L.A., a Homeboy Café, and a Homeboy silk-screening retail business. Homeboy. I liked the name. Why not sell Homeboy coffee—piping hot or fresh-ground—at the partly Venezuelan-owned chain of Citgo gas stations, starting in L.A. and then extending around the country?

  I had no interest in being a commodities broker, or a wheeler-dealer in international affairs. But as an activist and artist, I had a Rolodex that cut across classes and professions, and that frankly reached up into many a presidential office. I knew that when sovereign states fail to communicate, and issues of human rights are ignored as a result, an outsider can sometimes intervene and make things happen. That’s all I hoped to do here. So I reached out to Chávez through intermediaries, and back came an invitation to come see him.

  The delegation I took down in January 2006 included actor Danny Glover, talk-show host Tavis Smiley, professor Cornel West, Bo Taylor, a former gang leader, Nane Alejándrez of Barrios Unidos, and others. It was an eclectic group, and whatever we experienced would not be lost for want of eyes and ears.

  The barrel-shaped president came bounding out of his office into a large and rather elegant conference room where we had been directed to wait. As he greeted us, I was taken with the focus that Chávez gave each of the fifteen members of our delegation. His was more than just a social performance. It had purpose. I sensed how tightly coiled he was, bristling with energy, ready to deal with anything we put before him. Yet at the same time he radiated a sunny charm and fierce curiosity. He steered his group of cabinet members, staff, professors, and policymakers to sit opposite us at the long oval table. As for Chávez himself, he sat directly across from me.

  As he spoke, Chávez would reach for one or another of the books before him, find the citation he sought, and read aloud with a translator at his side. As with Fidel, there was no subject that he didn’t attack with ferocious enthusiasm—and none that he lacked an opinion on. Certainly he had a strong grasp of Latin American history and of the fine distinctions in law between Venezuela and its neighbors.

  That meeting went on all day. It went on for nine hours. Chávez was there the whole time. He showed enormous interest in our coffee idea, and turned routinely to delegate one aspect or another of it to one of his colleagues. Video cameras recorded it all. We’d brought a camera crew of our own; a Venezuelan television crew was there beside us. This marathon session was followed by a Sunday excursion with the president, as he led us into the rural interior for his weekly meet and greet, this time with an awestruck community of farmers. All over the country, Venezuelans watched their president on television having impromptu exchanges on-air with farmers, women, intellectuals, local officials, students, athletes, and artists who performed at given intervals. In a most spontaneous way, Chávez asked me to say a word to the Venezuelan people—not only to the thousands gathered before us but to the millions watching on TV. I realized this was an opportunity that I should treat carefully. I needed to be succinct, and easily translatable, especially for the international journalists. Mostly, I needed to speak from my deeper self, which I did.

  “We’re here to tell you that not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people support your revolution,” I said. As for President Bush, I added that he was “the greatest tyrant, the greatest terrorist in the world.” I went on to encourage the Venezuelan people to stay on course and seize their chance to shape a truly equitable society.

  Our group left very encouraged by the fervor with which Chávez endorsed our coffee project. Back home, we drew up our plans in detail, with all we’d learned on our trip. In the next w
eeks, delegates from Venezuela came to California, and delegates from our group went to Caracas. Young leaders from both sides debated issues of common interest. We even went so far as to visit each other’s prison systems in the quest for more humane forms of rehabilitation. Then suddenly, from our new Venezuelan colleagues, there was silence. Our phone calls went unreturned; deadlines were missed; the whole project shuddered to a halt. We read in the papers that Venezuela was caught in an economic downspin. But why would that kill a project that could only help hard-hit farmers?

  As far as I could tell, we’d been used. Apparently, for Venezuela, the power of those television images showing the distinguished American delegation in dialogue with its president had been worth all those hours of Chávez’s time. I don’t doubt that the U.S. State Department may have done its own part to quash the project; the Bush administration was hardly apt to view a business alliance between a left-wing American entertainer and the socialist president of Venezuela with much warmth and respect.

  After some fifty years of working with developing countries, I’ve found that a lot of good can be done by private citizens working back channels for public good. But these ventures stand a greater chance of success when the volunteers are white and from Wall Street than black and from Main Street.

  I really did think—still do—that George W. Bush was a terrorist. My only mistake was in calling him the greatest terrorist in the world, since I had not met them all. His launching a war against Iraq without cause, and with treacherous intent, resulting in the needless deaths of thousands of American servicemen and women and tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, the majority of them civilians, qualified him for the title, as far as I was concerned. Those thousands of innocent lives lost were, to the Bush administration, just “collateral damage,” a phrase that I find infuriating. To me, collateral damage is just a brazen attempt to find moral grounds for crimes against humanity.

  Just days after my return from Venezuela, Coretta Scott King was dead, at seventy-eight, the result of various health problems, including respiratory issues, multiple strokes, and ovarian cancer. That sad news stirred up a lot of mixed feelings in me.

  My bonds with Coretta and her children had loosened over the years. I was, by choice, no longer a director of the King Center, and while the children still referred to me as Uncle Harry in our infrequent catch-up phone calls, I didn’t see them much. But my history with the family was deep and long, and so I wasn’t surprised to be asked to speak at Coretta’s memorial service. I was, however, very surprised, a few days later, to get a call from Mrs. King’s secretary advising me that I would not be speaking. Not only that, I got the feeling it would be better if I did not come at all.

  When I’d recovered from my shock, I called Martin III to ask what had gone down. He was full of apologies. “Oh, Uncle Harry, there’s such confusion down here.” He meant in Lithonia, Georgia, where the funeral service was to take place. “Nothing is being coordinated right—I’m so sorry about this.” He spoke as if the whole event were out of his control. It wasn’t. I knew that.

  For some years now, Bernice, Martin’s youngest child, had tacked to the far right politically. She’d spoken out publicly in support of President Bush and his war in Iraq. She was also vehemently anti-gay, which made her a comrade-in-arms with a born-again Baptist preacher, Eddie Long, who ran a black megachurch called New Birth Missionary Baptist, where Coretta’s funeral was to take place. Long had taken Bernice into his fold, and introduced her to colleagues like Jerry Falwell. Bitterness, politics, and evangelical fervor got all mixed together in this group, and right-wing conservative family values ruled. Only they didn’t always prevail: In September 2010, the very Reverend Eddie Long would be the target of lawsuits accusing him of multiple instances of sexual abuse of young males in his congregation.

  In early 2006, I was the one swimming in moral turpitude, as far as Bernice was concerned. My recent comments about Hugo Chávez and George W. Bush had made the national news. I had little doubt that they’d angered Bernice and her born-again ilk. When I learned that the President had just agreed to attend the service, all my suspicions were confirmed. Forced to choose between one of their father’s close friends and a president their father would have abhorred, the children had had no trouble reaching their decision.

  Why, some must have wondered, was the service being held at the Reverend Long’s church in the first place? Why not at Ebenezer Baptist, the start of Martin and Coretta’s historic journey? Reverend Long was one of the evangelical right’s most revered black figures, the recipient of millions of dollars in contributions from that quarter, and a lot of that money found its way to Republican campaign coffers. Bush’s decision to come to the funeral was for them a win-win. It elevated the Reverend Long and his church to even greater national prominence. I have to suspect that it also inspired him and the Christian right to channel a little more lucre to the gay-bashing Republican party.

  Word of my disinvitation got out before the service, and among the people I heard from were Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. “Just go in with us,” they said. “And if they cause any fuss, we’ll take it to the next level”—by which they meant the press. I told them I appreciated their support. But hurtful as this was, I said, it was impossible for me to imagine confronting Martin’s children, especially around the occasion of Coretta’s death. After further exchange, we concluded that in the spirit of the movement, we should be trying to heal, not put further distance between each other.

  I didn’t say a public word on this. I watched the service on television, saw President and Mrs. Bush sitting solemnly along with former Presidents Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter, and heard the Reverend Joseph Lowery, a close associate of Martin’s for years in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, steal the show with his fiery rhetoric and blunt statement that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. I was especially moved by the writer Maya Angelou, who was most gracious in her reference to my absence. She was standing on that stage, she declared, for all the millions of people Coretta had inspired—millions who could not be there. One of those, she said, was me.

  I was sorry not to be there, but not that sorry. The children had grown up to be the people they were. I was who I was. In a sense they were right: In our current space, we really had nothing much to say to each other. The fact saddens me. Even more so since Yolanda, the firstborn, suddenly passed away, leaving behind a promise we had made to each other that we would come together again.

  My frayed relations with Martin’s family are upsetting, but not overly so. Things that might have really undone me in the past no longer do. In large measure I give Pam credit for that. I am too happy in my new life with her to dwell on misfortune. With Pam, I feel all the love and trust I always struggled to find and sustain. I know that a lot of complex psychological knots have come undone. I often ask: “So why, after all these years, does love feel so easy?”

  Peter Neubauer, my therapist of so many years, was naturally curious to meet the woman who’d turned me around at last, so I brought her with me to his office one day. As soon as he saw Pam, he smiled broadly and gave her a hug. In an instant, he could feel all the warmth and empathy she radiated. He’d taken to telling me that I was his oldest patient—not in age, but in the number of years I’d worked with him. Over the decades, our therapy had evolved into an intellectual bond. I think he felt that although my psychiatric journey was not quite complete, I’d come very far, from someone with so much bitterness and anger to a man nearly as happy as I could become. Pam was the proof; it was only by working through so many of my issues with Peter that I had been able to respond, as an open, loving person, to the love that Pam had to give. Only then, in the deepest way, could I trust another human being.

  The role Peter played in my life is hard to overstate. I’d spoken with him nearly every week, often more than once, for half a century. He knew me better than anyone else did, even Julie or Pam. Our exchange was so lively
and intimate, with no holds barred. Often I’d tell him he was looking at something a certain way because he was white, or Jewish, or both. We’d debate that, sometimes in anger, at least on my part, but then the process moved on. Between a white analyst and a black patient, race is always part of the dialogue. But only part—we went much deeper than that. With almost every challenge I faced—whether emotional, with my family and friends, or artistic—I would wait to talk with Peter before making a critical decision. And even now, when sudden flare-ups occur, I still ask, even in my anger: What would Peter say about this? But Peter was more than a decade older than I, and suddenly, to my shock, at the age of ninety-four, he was dying.

  The last time I saw Peter wasn’t a session; it was a farewell visit I made to his apartment in February 2008. He was sick, and as a doctor—a great doctor—he understood exactly the kind of disintegration his body was experiencing. He’d lost his freedom of movement, and his intellect was no longer keen. He told me that without his work, he no longer had a reason to live. He’d enjoyed our therapeutic relationship enormously, he said; he’d watched me learn how to deal so much better with life, especially with the women in my life, with my children, with the ghosts of my parents and past. As I listened to him, I began to understand. I was on my own at last.

  He died just days later.

  The timing was a fluke, but it felt symbolic: Pam and I had already set a date for our wedding just weeks later. To avoid having to choose which friends to invite and which to leave off the list, with all the attendant hurt feelings, we made it a family-only affair. Including grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and in-laws, the total came to a not-inconsiderable thirty people. Neither of us wanted a religious wedding, and so, like David, we chose a New York restaurant as our venue. For us it was Terrace in the Sky, up near Columbia University, with its panoramic skyline views. The date was April 12, 2008, a bit anticlimactic, since Pam and I had been living together for some time, but a profoundly joyous occasion, nonetheless. Former Mayor David Dinkins had done such a good job at David’s wedding that we had him officiate at ours, too. Besides, Dave is one of my closest friends. He will say at the drop of a hat that it was I who, at the critical moment, pushed him to run for mayor of New York. I am still not quite sure if he considers that advice a blessing or a curse.