Entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte implored college students to help shape the future during a two-hour talk that also included stories about the people who have influenced him.
“You are responsible for this generation the way we were responsible for the last one,” Belafonte said Wednesday at Wright State University. “So if you see things that are unacceptable, you have a responsibility to change them. Make a difference. If you don’t, you have no one to blame but yourself.”
Also in attendance was comedian Dave Chappelle, who lives nearby in the southwest Ohio village of Yellow Springs. Chappelle’s mother, Yvonne Seon, is founding director of Wright State’s Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center and introduced Belafonte to the audience.
Belafonte, famous for his calypso-inspired music, told stories about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others who have helped inspire him.
“I was born in Harlem but at an early age my mother took us back to her homeland, Jamaica,” Belafonte said. “When I returned to New York at age 13, it was common for me to see Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, W.E.B. DuBois and, the tallest tree in the forest, Paul Robeson.”
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