Research Catalog

Details

Additional authors

1. Belafonte, Harry, 1927-2023.

Description

1. 0.6 lin. ft. (1 1/2 boxes)

Summary

1. Kennedy's Belafonte Files are divided into Agent and Informant series. The Agent Files include correspondence between Belafonte and his agents, Kennedy and Jack Rollins, contracts, legal briefs, financial reports, and a termination agreement between Kennedy and Belafonte, a dispute which lingered until 1960 over the control of Shari Music Publishing. Also included are original materials and several versions of the script for the musical drama "Sing Man Sing," with lyrics and music by Kennedy and Belafonte.
2. The Informant Files extend from 1956 to 1965. Federal agents, presumably from the CIA, interviewed Kennedy in the wake of Belafonte's hostile testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956. Included are a 40-page "Summary of some 30 hours of detailed background" given by Kennedy to an agent identified as NF (January 1957), and a 36-page narrative, "Meeting with Steve Nelson," with attachments, authored by Kennedy (1956-1957). Also included are eight letters from Morse Allen, CIA director of Security Research Staff (1960-1965); an 8-page report on Belafonte culled from material provided by Kennedy (1965); and a 1965 "Last Will and Testament" by Kennedy, charging that, should he die of unnatural causes, "the assassins would be Peking communist agents in the United States working directly with Harry Belafonte, Stanley D. Levison and Martin Luther King."

Subject

1. Belafonte, Harry, 1927-2023
2. Belafonte, Harry, 1927-2023 > Political and social views
3. Artists' representatives > United States
4. Entertainers > United States
5. Shari Music Publishing
6. African Americans in the performing arts
7. African American entertainers
8. United States > Central Intelligence Agency

Call number

1. Sc MG 617

Note

1. One black and white photograph of Kennedy and Belafonte transferred to Photographs and Prints Division.

Source (note)

1. Charles Apfelbaum Rare Manuscripts and Archives

Biography (note)

1. Jay Richard Kennedy, author, composer, publisher, was an entertainer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte's manager and agent from 1955 to 1956. Born Samuel Richard Solomonick of Jewish immigrant parents in the Bronx in 1911, Kennedy was a union organizer and the circulation manager of the Communist Party's "Daily Worker." He left the Communist Party after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, and started a new career as a writer, entertainer's agent and stock broker. For a ten-year period beginning in 1956, he provided information and analysis to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Belafonte, the American Communist Party and the Soviet Union. He died in 1991, Los Angeles.

Author

1. Kennedy, Jay Richard.

Title

1. Harry Belafonte files, 1954-1981.

Biography

1. Jay Richard Kennedy, author, composer, publisher, was an entertainer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte's manager and agent from 1955 to 1956. Born Samuel Richard Solomonick of Jewish immigrant parents in the Bronx in 1911, Kennedy was a union organizer and the circulation manager of the Communist Party's "Daily Worker." He left the Communist Party after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, and started a new career as a writer, entertainer's agent and stock broker. For a ten-year period beginning in 1956, he provided information and analysis to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Belafonte, the American Communist Party and the Soviet Union. He died in 1991, Los Angeles.

Connect to:

1. Finding aid

Added author

1. Belafonte, Harry, 1927-2023.

Research call number

1. Sc MG 617