Four things you probably did not know Harry Belafonte did for MLK and the civil rights struggle

He internationalized the civil rights struggle, especially in Africa

America’s civil rights problems were not under-reported in Europe but very much so in Africa. Being the continent which is the ancestral home of the millions who were being denied their dignity, Africa had to know about 1960s America.

But this was not a project Belafonte deliberately took on. It was inadvertent but still effective.

His professional and personal relationship with Miriam Makeba, the apartheid-era South African singer, brought together two black people with very similar stories to share.