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Entertainer-activist explains how he feels the world will react to the election of Sen. Obama as president and how we should serve him and the U.S. (2:58)
 

Full interview. (12:37)
 

Tavis: Barack Obama last night in Chicago, following his historic victory. I can think of no better person to talk to on this day after than Harry Belafonte. The legendary entertainer and tireless civil rights advocate has been such an instrumental voice in the fight for equal rights and justice in this country and beyond.

During his extraordinary career he's achieved so many firsts, including the first African American producer and the first African American performer to win an Emmy award among that long list. He joins us tonight from New York. Mr. B, as always, a delight to have you on the program, sir.

Harry Belafonte: It's nice to be with you again, Tavis.

Tavis: I wanted to have you on, as I said a moment ago, because I thought that you could help me historically situate what this moment means, your friendship with Dr. King, and all these King-Obama comparisons. We'll get to all that in just a moment, but I'm delighted to have you on. Let me just start by asking you what you make of what happened last night.

Belafonte: I think America once again displayed the magnificence of this nation and its capacity to be able to snatch itself out of the jaws of defeat and put itself into a place where the whole world can once again be filled with a sense of hope and a sense of future.

I was reminded of Dr. King's last speech when he said, in the church in Memphis just before he was assassinated, when he talked about "I can see the promised land. And I may not get there with you, but we will get there." And I think last night was a revelation of that rather prophetic remark on Dr. King's part.

There is something about the Promised Land that's embodied in what happened to America and what has happened to this country manifested in the turnout in the vote that we had yesterday.

Tavis: I saw a guy on the news earlier today, Mr. B, holding up a sign that said, "We have overcome." Not we shall - "We have overcome." Is that an overstatement? Is that a little too much?

Belafonte: Well, I'd like to be able to embrace that kind of optimistic enthusiasm, but I would suggest that we view all of this with an important amount of caution. I'm reminded of something that Eleanor Roosevelt once told a group of us at a dinner. It was when she had first introduced A. Philip Randolph, a great labor leader back in the 1930s up to and including the civil rights movement.

And she introduced him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the first time at a dinner, and Roosevelt beseeched him to please tell him what he thought of the nation, what he thought of the plight of the Negro people and what did he think - where the nation was headed.

And A. Philip Randolph held forth and spoke eloquently on his thoughts, and at the end of it Roosevelt said to him, "You know, Mr. Randolph, I've heard everything you've said tonight, and I couldn't agree with you more. I agree with everything that you've said, including my capacity to be able to right many of these wrongs and to use my power and the bully pulpit." He said, "But I would ask one thing of you, Mr. Randolph, and that is go out and make me do it."

I don't think that Barack Obama can be abandoned. I think that with all that we feel and all that we're nourished by and feel enthusiastic about, we've got to stay the course, because I think the most important test now lies before us, and how he will conduct affairs for this nation and in the hopes that have sprung eternal globally will be determined by how the public, how people, behave.

How Black America behaves, how the poor people of this country will continue to respond and to demand, and where America's humanity will lead it. But I don't think we can abandon the ship right now, and I don't think we have come to the full realization of what we all want America to be.

Tavis: What's your sense, Mr. B, to your - these are your words, and I want to excavate them - what's your sense of how Black America will behave? We see how they are behaving, how they are rejoicing, how they are exalted, jubilant, in this moment, and nobody ought to begrudge them that - I certainly don't. What's your sense, though, beyond the inauguration, how they're going to behave? Are their expectations too great? What's your sense of how we are going to navigate this moment?

Belafonte: Well, I think of all the people in this country who have earned the right to celebrate, none have earned that right more than the African American community. However, it is not a standalone community, and I think that we have been here before. When slavery was overthrown in the great Civil War and we went into the post-Civil War period and elected Black officials to our Congress and our Senate, it was not too long after that that we introduced 100 years of apartheid - the cruelest and the most oppressive segregation system known to the world was introduced, and lingered.

We've had other occasions when at the end of the second world war, when we all came back with a great sense of hope for America's future and the fact that we'd defeated fascism and that White supremacy should have no place in the mix of civil society, we went into this period of McCarthyism and Emmett Till and all the violence and all of the pain and oppression that evoked the need and the hope for a Dr. King, who came to service.

So I think that although we've earned the right to celebrate and we should celebrate, I think we must also understand that we've been here before, and now is the time when we are most required to be vigilant and most required to stay the course, because this thing that we have just achieved could be very - could be easily taken away from us.

Tavis: You are dear friends with Nelson Mandela; you brought him here when he was released from that prison for his wonderful and beautiful U.S. tour that I remember like yesterday, meeting him here in L.A. when you brought him to L.A. You brought him here. Mandela, of course, an international icon, and with all due respect to Barack Obama, he did not spend, has not spent 27 years in prison for what he believed.

But the comparison, I think is this - he, last night, became automatically an international icon. Talk to me, given your friendship with Mandela and your friendship with Dr. King, on how one navigates governing, leading, when you become an icon.

Belafonte: I think it's a very troubling journey. I don't think it's a journey that cannot be achieved, leading a nation to a new paradigm, to a new order, to a new hope - that's eternal. But I do - I've just left Nelson Mandela, just two, two and a half short weeks ago, and in the midst of a tremendous upheaval in this young, fledgling democracy - Thabo Mbeki has been toppled.

People are moving into the positions of power that are driven mostly by the lust for power rather than for that which is the best for the nation and best for the peoples of that nation. It's only 14 years old, and it's sad that Nelson Mandela should have lived long enough to watch those who have inherited his gift of a democratic society should watch that society be in such a troubled place at the moment.

I don't mean to suggest that there isn't still a lot of resilience and a lot of good things that can happen, but democracy never lingers without inviting a lot of mischief makers into wanting to turn it around, to take it back to what it was before we experience democracy in the fullest sense.

And I think here, using Mandela as a model, as a thought in history, I think that Barack Obama now sits in a place where the world admires him and what has been achieved by this country. Now is the most important time of this new legacy.

Tavis: To your point now, Mr. B, was the mere election of Barack Obama enough to resuscitate our reputation around the world? Does it take much more than that? And if so, what advice would you give to him, being the international human rights activist that you are, about how to, beyond the mere mention of his name as president-elect, restore our image around the world?

Belafonte: I think for a quick fix and for an instant turnaround that the world really hoped for and wanted, America could not have done better than selecting Barack Obama as our president. The whole world was hoping that this America, which they have loved for so long, which went into the dark ages over the last eight years of the administration that still lingers.

I think that people were deeply concerned of where America was going, and their relationship to America. Now I think people have been struck everywhere with a great sense of hope, a great sense of future, and they're expecting Barack Obama to lead them to that hopeful place.

What I would suggest, however, is that we not put too much burden on the brother. He's a wonderful, resilient, strong young man, and I expect great things from him, but he should not be left alone. I think we should be at his service, we should help him hold institutions and people accountable, we should serve him as best as we can, and we should try to help him make government transparent. And I think the world has a hope that this is what will be.

Tavis: I like your formulation that we need to best serve him. We tend to think of electing a president to serve us, and indeed it is a symbiotic relationship, but unpack that for me when you say we need to best serve him. How do we do that?

Belafonte: Well, I look back at the days of the Kennedys and all that came with them and America's great hope, and America's great wish for the future, and I think to a great degree, the Kennedy and certainly the Johnson administration stepped to the table in very important ways. Much was missing - the war in Vietnam, we didn't get a chance to realize the fullness of the great society that Johnson wanted - but we were in a very critical period, and we saw - we went our way through that.

But there was also an America that was awake and active - the civil rights movement was at its height, the anti-war movement was at its height. So there was a lot of Americans, very active, that did much to push the political agenda of this country into the right direction.

And I would say that I think America made more history with John Kennedy than John Kennedy made history with America. This nation pushed him, and I think we have to do the same with Barack Obama.

Tavis: Let me offer this, then, Mr. B, as the exit question here. You're still as handsome as ever and you're just now a young 80, 81 years of age, but given those years that you have behind you, contextualize for me in your lifetime what you make of this moment this week and how we ought to view it, as you see it.

Belafonte: America has always been in a place of great dichotomy. The very inception of this nation, founded by the Founding Fathers - what a magnificent document they wrote in the creating of this Constitution. How ironic that the very same men who wrote that Constitution and spoke so passionately about democracy and governance should have been the very same men who were the holders of slaves, who supported the slave tradition.

It was a split in our character, in our personality, in our morality. And all through the years, America's shown this duplicity, has shown this double standard. I think we're still the same America with the potential to go wrong very much in our midst. It is up to us to learn from that history and to know that we have another opportunity knocking at our door to turn this country around and to make the world the place the world very much wants to be.

Tavis: And there you see why I wanted to have Mr. Belafonte on as the lead guest on this historic day after. Mr. B, I love you - there ain't nothing you can do about it. Thanks for your time.

Belafonte: Love you too, Tavis. Thank you for having me on.