Artist and icon Harry Belafonte returns to Houston for speaking event

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Friday, February 24, 2017
Harry Belafonte returns to Houston
Harry Belafonte returns to Houston for speaking engagement.

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- It was a reunion nearly 50 years in the making as actor, singer and activist Harry Belafonte returned to Houston.

In 1967, Belafonte worked with Rev. Bill Lawson to organize a concert. Along with singer Aretha Franklin and Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the concert was planned to raise money for the Civil Rights Movement.

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A stench bomb inside an air-conditioning system kept Belafonte away from Houston and the state of Texas.

"Something had been released in the air-conditioning system and gone through the entire building and made it not fit for human gathering," he said. "And that was it. I left and never came to Texas again."

Belafonte was back in town Thursday night to host "A Conversation with Harry Belafonte" at the Wortham Theater Center.