Carmen Perez-Jordan on Harry Belafonte’s Passing and Legacy

The world continues to mourn after listening to the information that Harry Belafonte died on April 25 at 96 years previous. Though he is perhaps most immediately recognizable for his roles in Hollywood and his musical hits, his legacy inside the civil rights motion is deeply felt right this moment. He fiercely advocated for political and humanitarian causes all through his life, working alongside fellow activists and leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 2005, Belafonte based the Gathering for Justice, a nonprofit group that gives an intergenerational discussion board for activists, neighborhood members, previously incarcerated people, and extra to work in the direction of ending little one incarceration and eliminating the racial inequities in our justice system.

Carmen Perez-Jordan is president and CEO of the Gathering for Justice, and was an in depth mentee of Belafonte’s for 20 years. She’s a pioneer inside the social justice motion in her personal proper, cofounding Justice League NYC and organizing the 2017 Girls’s March as a cochair. A day after Belafonte’s passing, she shared her joyful reminiscences of Belafonte, recommendation from the icon, and what she’ll miss most about him. Learn all of it in her phrases forward.

I wasn’t prepared for him to go away us. I believe with somebody like Mr. Belafonte, you simply really feel like he will stay ceaselessly, you wish to maintain having conversations with him, you wish to go issues by him, you wish to hear his perspective on the political local weather or what’s taking place within the US and in different nations, as a result of he at all times had an evaluation. I will miss that. I want that. I want that as an individual who’s nonetheless main a motion, who’s nonetheless rising herself.

I met Mr. Belafonte over 20 years in the past. I had been working with a company referred to as Barrios Unidos, and I used to be working inside prisons. On the time, Mr. Belafonte was launched to me because the mentor of my mentor, Nane Alejandrez. He had been somebody who was supportive of Nane’s management, and we had introduced Mr. B into the jail. Once I met him, I used to be like, wow, he is a really engaging older man. However then he was so humble and in addition very humorous. He went into the jail, and it was in Tracy, CA, on the time, and it was about 105 levels contained in the jail. And I simply bear in mind seeing everybody’s admiration of him and me probably not understanding who Mr. Harry Belafonte was. Clearly, he was somebody who made an impression, somebody who folks wished to talk to. I bear in mind him selecting up one of many males’s sneakers, spitting on it, and speaking about shining sneakers, after which he began sharpening the shoe.

In my time with him after that, I used to be like a fly on the wall. I used to be so younger, I used to be in my mid-20s, in between Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, and Nane Alejandrez, who had been simply these giants within the motion. However even at the moment, I did not find out about all of the contributions Mr. B had made through the civil rights motion, through the apartheid motion. I did not know he was a confidant to Dr. King, and I did not know the affect he had, not simply on US soil however all around the world — and that he was a widely known artist. I simply noticed him as somebody who was supporting the work that we had been doing domestically in Santa Cruz.

Then, I used to be introduced right into a convening that was referred to as the Gathering of Youth and Elders, which was put collectively by Mr. Belafonte after he’d initially convened the elders of the Civil Rights Motion. In 2005, Mr. B had witnessed the information experiences of a 5-year-old Black woman, Jaisha Scott, and she or he was being handcuffed and arrested in her Florida classroom for being unruly. He thought it was vital to convene his technology and take a look at little one incarceration as an ethical crucial. He introduced individuals who had been a part of the civil rights motion, however he additionally referred to as his friends and elders from the Chicano motion, the Indigenous motion. He introduced people collectively like Marian Wright Edelman, my mentor Nane Alejandrez, Julian Bond, Ruby Dee, John Lewis, Reverend Al Sharpton, and others. And he requested them, “How is it that youngsters are being locked up and languishing within the prisons of America?” And what he rapidly realized was that he was going to have to repair his sights on the youth and set up with youthful folks. That is after I was introduced in.

Mr. Belafonte was a ahead thinker, he was actually forward of his time; he was a convener, a connector. He was extraordinarily strategic, and he felt that bringing folks collectively to construct collective energy was going to get us to true liberation and to collective liberation. He cared deeply in regards to the plight of Black folks and at all times centered girls and centered Indigenous peoples — but additionally knew there was a task for everybody to play in social justice. And his function as an artist was to leverage his celeb to make sure that he bought entry for folks like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He was somebody who, after I would ask him a query about an incident in time or why sure issues had been taking place, he would have a three-hour dialog with me that was actually a historic evaluation of how we bought to right this moment. He served his time, and it was now as much as us, and it was actually why he felt he wanted to convene the following technology of leaders.

So Mr. Belafonte was somebody who — I believe for me, I’ll by no means meet one other particular person like him, and I believe I have been mourning him for fairly a while. There are such a lot of classes in the whole lot he shared, and what I felt as any individual who was sitting at his ft is that I at all times wished to bottle up the information that he gave me and share it with the world. So what I began doing was convening teams of younger folks to come back meet him. I at all times felt like I used to be a mini Mr. Belafonte; as he convened his technology and his friends, I started to convene my friends, to actually introduce and educate his classes. I am unable to emphasize sufficient how he confirmed up within the motion world, how he confirmed up as a celeb. However he was simply somebody who cared deeply in regards to the points. And though he gained entry and celeb and luxury by means of his artwork and his music and his performing, he by no means forgot in regards to the individuals who had been sitting within the stomach of the beast or who had been being oppressed.

After which, once we could be within the workplace, we had moments of pleasure. There’d be moments the place we might play music. And there’d be sounds from Africa or sounds from Mexico, and we’d simply stand up and dance. He had a cane, however he would nonetheless make noises, like actual genuine sounds of the music, and he would shake his fingers, nearly like he was enjoying congas. I bear in mind one other time on the workplace, he had requested his assistant to get out his peanut butter and jelly and his bread, and he began making me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He was like, “You look hungry.” I do know that the work was difficult, and oftentimes with this work, you are responding to disaster, however there was at all times pleasure in it.

I bear in mind the primary time I walked into the workplace as an govt, when he put me within the function of govt director in 2010. And he requested me, “Who’re you?” And I used to be like, “I am Chicana, and I am happy with it.” And he was like, “No, who’re you?” and he ended up dropping in entrance of me “The Afro-Latin@ Reader,” and he was like, “I need you to go to Mexico and discover out who you might be.” And he really paid for me to go to Mexico and be with my mother and father as they celebrated their fiftieth wedding ceremony anniversary, and I realized that my household was Indigenous and that that they had African roots, too, that my grandfather was Afro-Mexicano and that my grandmother was Huichol and Aztec and Zacatecas. He at all times had this curiosity.

For him to take a younger Chicana from Oxnard, CA, and take me below his wing as an African American man, a Jamaican immigrant, actually mentioned one thing about how he envisioned the way forward for the motion and the world. There have been occasions the place he could be criticized or I might be criticized as a result of I used to be not who folks thought I needs to be below his tutelage, however 20-something years in the past, after I was requested to work for Mr. Belafonte and I did not know the caliber of a person that he was, I made a promise to stick with Mr. Belafonte, to assist him stay out the remainder of his life, happy with the work that he did. And I did not take that promise flippantly.

I will want mentorship and steerage and route as I work out what the following project is. As a result of we’d be asking for the project, and he would say, “The project is to search out the project.” And I believed I discovered the project. So now it is a matter of me persevering with to faucet into my different mentors and elders, however I am nonetheless going to want the love and help from my motion household to assist the Gathering to do his work and proceed his legacy.

And to be right here, speaking about who he was and who he’s nonetheless in my life, I do know that I’ve to hold on the work. The work would not finish simply because he is gone. It continues, as a result of we’re nonetheless dealing with a whole lot of the injustices that he persistently talked about and fought in opposition to himself, and it will take all of us. It will take every one in all us to play our function, to search out our lane, within the collective liberation of our folks.

— As advised to Lena Felton