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  DANIEL WONG UCLA Thurgood Marshall Award honoree Harry Belafonte, right, speaks with NFL hall-of-famer Jim Brown at Thursday's event.

By Michelle Kroes

Daily Bruin Contributor

UCLA’s Center for African American Studies honored entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte at a fund-raising dinner last Thursday.

“I have no tolerance for injustice,” Belafonte said. “I don’t know how to accommodate it. And so, I have become part of the force that inhibits its path.”

As the recipient of UCLA’s Thurgood Marshall award, Belafonte presented the 12th annual Thurgood Marshall lecture, which centered on experience of human rights in the world and America’s role therein.

“He is a voice for the African American people,” said Osayi Ehigiator, a first-year American literature student. “Hearing him is an opportunity for us to know the advances we’ve made – it builds our self-respect and relates to other students our heritage.”

Belafonte has directed his life toward the pursuit for greater justice despite the setbacks he has faced in the past.

In one account, Belafonte spoke about the disappointment in discovering that his fight in World War II for the U.S. and its democracy only maintained his unequal stature. This, however, did not defeat him, but rather pushed him to forward his cause for justice.

“After the war we quickly learned what the score was,” Belafonte said. “But it soon filled us with militancy and spirit.”

The struggle for freedom has taken Belafonte through war, segregation, McCarthyism and many more challenges against race.

“My life has been part of a remarkable journey, part of the oppression that endured and endures,” he said.

He has seen this oppression throughout the world in places as far away as Africa and as close as this campus. He told his audience that when he was asked by UCLA to speak to faculty and students earlier that afternoon, only 20 people showed in an auditorium that seated 200 to 300 people.

“I came with expectations and hope, but the attendance was so lacking,” he said.

Belafonte’s participation in the struggle for human rights is globally respected. He has taken up many global causes but was most involved with the struggle for civil rights in the United States, as well as Africa’s various freedom movements.

In all his activities, Belafonte has befriended many great leaders, including the late Martin Luther King Jr.

On one occasion, he remembers King’s words, which inspired him to not only fight for equality but more importantly, to alter the system altogether.

“We have fought long and hard for integration. The mission is righteous and I believe it will survive. But a new revelation has come upon me, we are integrating into an already burning house,” Belafonte quoted King saying before his campaign in Memphis mounted.

King, who was disturbed by his own thought, asserted that this situation could be resolved if the fires were extinguished.

“He was healed immediately by saying that African Americans needed to be firemen,” Belafonte said.

Likewise, Belafonte not only has wanted to lessen the racial divide but also to effectively change a system that allows for such disparities.

In the past, Belafonte has been honored with the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Prize and was also the first recipient for the Nelson Mandela Courage Award.

The Thurgood Marshall lecture series was established at UCLA in 1986 to celebrate the contributions of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who stands then and now as a 20th century symbol, said Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, dean of the graduate division.

“He reminds us to use knowledge to make a difference,” she said.

All the proceeds from the fund-raising dinner will go to student scholarships, faculty research and ongoing activities for the center.

“The center is using the opportunity of this lecture to honor a distinguished activist in civil rights and to raise support for our programs,” said Richard Yarborough, director of the Center for African American Studies. “We want to make a stronger difference on and off campus.”