Remembering Harry Belafonte / "Full-Spectrum" Doula On Birth & Abortion

Fresh Air

NPR

Society & Culture, Arts, Tv & Film, Books

4.3 • 36.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Singer Harry Belafonte starred in films and helped popularize calypso music in the U.S. in the 1950s. In the '60s he became a civil rights activist. He died April 25. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1993.

Also, we hear from "full-spectrum" doula Vicki Bloom. Since 2010, Bloom has worked with the Doula Project, a New York City-based collective that partners with clinics to support pregnant people — whether the result is childbirth, miscarriage, or abortion.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new reboot series Fatal Attraction.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this podcast comes from the New Bower Family Foundation, supporting
0:04.7	WHY Wise Fresh Air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation.
0:11.3	This is Fresh Air.
0:12.5	I'm Terry Gross.
0:14.0	Harry Belafonte, the famous singer, actor, producer and civil rights activist, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure.
0:21.5	He was 96.
0:23.1	We're going to listen back to the interview I recorded with him in 1993.
0:27.5	His obituary in the New York Times said, quote,
0:30.5	At a time when segregation was still widespread and black faces were still ererity on screens large and small,
0:37.3	Mr. Belafonte's ascent to the upper echelon of show business was historic, unquote.
0:43.3	In an appreciation in the Times, Wesley Morris described Belafonte as a folk hero.
0:48.4	Quote, he understood how to dedicate his fame to a politics of accountability more tenaciously than any star of the civil rights era
0:56.6	or in its wake.
0:58.0	He helped underwrite the civil rights movement, paying for freedom rides.
1:01.8	He maintained a life insurance policy on the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1:06.4	with Coretta Scott King as the beneficiary, because Dr. King didn't believe he could afford it, unquote.
1:13.1	Belafonte helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, at which Dr. King gave his famous, I have a dream speech.
1:21.4	Harry Belafonte first became known in the US as a singer.
1:24.8	With his 1956 hits, Jamaica Farewell and the Banana Boat song, he popularized Calipso in America.
1:39.7	They lied, come and be Wang.
1:46.2	We're called night on a drinker rum.
1:54.2	Stuck banana, tilli manin come.
	...

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