Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte Review

During his address, Harry Belafonte said, “We've come to a time when we have abandoned radical thought. Without radical thought America cannot move forward. Without radical thought democracy does not really work. Democracy, and the way that it is shaped, requires constant vision and radical thought is central to that fact." This statement made me seriously consider the logic behind the Civil Rights Movement. It helped me understand that a shift in thinking is what prompted the movement. African-Americans were no longer willing to settle for the status of second class American citizens. I learned that the youth must be the pioneers of change, the marginalized must continue to petition for their own interests and that democracy is what we are fighting for.

“Radical thoughts are very necessary in America, especially from the students that fill our campuses and universities,” said Belafonte. Harry Belafonte was not addressing the Northwestern student body when he said this but instead, he was addressing America’s youth as a whole. He used Martin Luther King Jr. as the prime example of a young man who thought on a different level and, as a result, was a pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. According to Belafonte, the American youth does not employ this radical thought. We are not on our way to starting a stellar, societal movement because we do not think outside of the box as much as the generation of the Civil Rights Movement. We live within the limits of our current society and embrace those limits.

I learned that marginalized people must continue to petition for their own interests. Belafonte also presented the statement, “It’s about what you can do for your country, not what your country can do for you” made by President John F. Kennedy. This concept can be debated because of the disconnection marginalized...