Duke Univ. Welcomes Calypso's King of Hate, Says Young America's Foundation

Duke Univ. Welcomes Calypso's King of Hate, Says Young America's Foundation

Harry Belafonte to Deliver MLK Tribute

Last Year it was Former Communist Party Candidate Angela Davis

HERNDON, Va., Jan. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke University -- ranked 5th nationally by U.S. News & World Report -- has accepted with open arms avowed socialist and radical entertainer Harry Belafonte to deliver the school's commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Last year speaking at an MLK event in Chicago, Belafonte opined that the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 were a result of "America's hand of villainy." Belafonte is also famous for calling President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" and for comparing Colin Powell to a house "slave" and the Bush administration to the "Third Reich."

Duke officials are comfortable with Belafonte's extremism and with having students subject to a left-wing interpretation on civil rights. Ben Reese, co-chair of the King Commemoration Committee at Duke, gloated that "Harry Belafonte was the unanimous choice of the committee and we look forward to welcoming him to the Duke campus." Conservative blacks such as Ward Connerly, JC Watts, or Clarence Thomas have been left off the invitation list.

"Dr. King's soft tenor and brotherly love is a stark contrast to Belafonte's hateful and divisive words," says Jason Mattera, Spokesman for Young America's Foundation. "King said that 'We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.' Belafonte has said that 'Bush is a tyrant' and that black presidential appointees are 'tyrants' as well."

John Korman, Young America's Foundation activist and Duke student, called for "future [MLK] speakers to clearly uphold the ideals of human dignity, racial unity, and peaceful dissent that King gave his life to attain."

Last year, Duke's MLK speaker was a two-time Communist Party Vice Presidential candidate Angela Davis. Davis, a recipient of the Lenin "Peace Prize" from the police state of East Germany, has said that the "only path of liberation for black people is that which leads toward complete and radical overthrow of the capitalist class."

Duke is no stranger to preaching the Left's message. The school has a department named after John Hope Franklin who famously said that Americans "are a bigoted people and always have been. We think every other country is trying to copy us now, and if they are, God help the world."

Furthermore, Duke made Young America's Foundation's Dirty Dozen list for offering the course "American Dreams/American Realities," which supposedly unearths "such myths as 'rags to riches,' 'beacon to the world,' and the 'frontier,' in defining the American character."

The contrast between Belafonte and King's words are vast.
Love as interpreted by Dr. King and Harry Belafonte:

Dr. King: "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred."

Belafonte: "Bush is a tyrant and if he gathers around him black tyrants [Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell], they all have to be treated as they are being treated."

Source: Young America's Foundation

CONTACT: Jason Mattera of Young America's Foundation, Cell:
+1-917-754-3425, or Office: +1-800-USA-1776

Web site: http://www.yaf.org/

NOTE TO EDITORS: Interviews are available upon request

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