He remained politically active to the end. On Election Day 2016, The Times published an opinion article by Mr. Belafonte urging people not to vote for Donald J. Trump, whom he called feckless and immature.
Mr. Trump asks us what we have to lose, he wrote, referring to African American voters, and we must answer: Only the dream, only everything.
Four years later, he returned to the opinion pages with a similar message: We have learned exactly how much we had to lose a lesson that has been inflicted upon Black people again and again in our history and we will not be bought off by the empty promises of the flimflam man.
Looking back on his life and career, Mr. Belafonte was proud but far from complacent. About my own life, I have no complaints, he wrote in his autobiography. Yet the problems faced by most Americans of color seem as dire and entrenched as they were half a century ago.
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"History shows again and again that nature points out the folly of man. Go go Godzilla!" Godzilla - Blue Oyster Cult