Impact Of Belafonte Bio

Friday I started to read “My Song”, the autobiography of Harry Belafonte.  He, Elvis, and Ives Montand all impacted my life when I was a young teenager.  My mom wouldn’t let me watch Elvis on The Ed Sullivan show because of the hip wagging.  I asked her what was the big deal about his hips,  but she had no real explanation!  She certainly would not have enjoyed dancing in Cuba, though my daughter and I loved the street music and dancing we saw there when we visited on a student exchange some years ago.  One of the Cuban women told me I could really move when we were taken to a club to dance – maybe that’s what my mom was afraid of!  She loved Belafonte, buying several of his records.  He was much sexier, so I’m not sure why he seemed OK to her.  He and Montand were the first performers who made me stomach flutter; I loved them both.  I’ve always known, or at least since I was grown, that Belafonte was politically active, and outspoken.  I had no idea that he came from extreme poverty, as well as abuse.  I also hadn’t thought about where he and his musicians stayed when he toured the country to perform, though I’d read about the travails of  Billie Holiday in that regard. That he was angry throughout his life was also news to  me, though not at all surprising.  I’m angry about lots of the same things, even though I didn’t experience them first hand, as he did, or as my partner has for his whole life.  He is part Indian and part Chicano.  What I did experience was awful and has altered my life in ways too numerous to recount here.  But the memory of how it all began is still vivid, as if it is happening all over again as I write this blog.  When I was in the seventh grade, my social studies teacher, Miss Larkin, stood in front of the class and asked us if we believed in the ten commandments.  Of course we said ‘yes’, though I doubt any of us could have named them all.  She went on from there.  If we were selling our house, and loved our neighbors, we would not sell to a black person because that might upset them.  I felt totally confused.  Without raising my hand, I stammered, ‘But Miss Larkin.  I don’t think that’s what the bible means by neighbor.  My neighbor is my fellow human being, like the black man who wants to buy my house.  My next door neighbor is a bigot, and that’s not the person I’m supposed to honor. ”  As I spoke, her face grew redder and redder.  Why she didn’t interrupt me, I have no idea.  As soon as I stopped speaking, she glared at me, raised her hand and pointed at the classroom door.  “Get out of my room, you communist!” I was terrified.  I went home.  When I got there I told my mother what had happened and asked her what the word meant.  She could not hide her anger.  She put on her coat, and told Trudl, who lived with us because of my mother’s heart condition, to give me something delicious to eat, and left the house.  Years later I learned that she had gone to the Principal first, and then to the Superintendent of Schools.  He said he could not really help me, although he did insist that Miss Larkin retain me as her student.  She and her teacher friends made my life miserable; my reputation preceded me to the local high school.  Friends vanished.  I was properly silenced until I arrived at Sarah Lawrence College, years after my high school graduation, and joined SDS.  The first time I spoke at a meeting, I cried from fright.  I vowed that no one would silence me anymore, and no one has.  The scars, however, remain, that somehow I am ‘other’ and odd.  Being ‘odd’ like Belafonte feels like an honor.  The civil rights movement altered lots: no more ‘white only’ signs, though segregated neighborhoods still abound.  The other night, coming home from a movie in town, a car passed us with a young guy at the wheel.  He raised his hand, turning it into a ‘gun’ and aimed it at my partner.  He was upset, though he shrugged it off.  I was appalled.  This  country does not need to go elsewhere to fix ‘problems’.  There are still plenty right here at home.