Harry Belafonte was a Westbury Music Fair mainstay

Harry Belafonte lived in several New York City neighborhoods including East Elmhurst, Queens. But Long Island locales like Sag Harbor and the onetime Westbury Music Fair, now the NYCB Theatre at Westbury, were often his homes-away-from-home. Indeed, his feelings toward Long Island were such that he sponsored a scholarship for Long Island college students. And when the legendary Long Island hip-hop group Public Enemy joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was Belafonte who inducted them.

The Grammy, Emmy, Tony and honorary Academy Award winner — who broke racial barriers, achieved cultural firsts and fought for Civil Rights alongside his friend the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — was a frequent visitor to the Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest and Ninevah subdivisions, or SANS,  the historically Black East End vacation community. He was in good company, with the likes of Lena Horne and Duke Ellington among other celebrity visitors.

Belafonte also performed at Westbury many times. His concert tour "The Harry Belafonte Show" took residence there from June 27 to July 9, 1966, and along with a five-piece band and The Belafonte Singers as backup, included blues legends Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. It was also responsible for, as the program book credited, "introducing Nana Mouskouri" to the United States after the future global pop icon had begun to make her mark in her native Europe.

"At first the audience seemed a bit reserved, the applause more friendly than enthusiastic," wrote Newsday music critic Bob Micklin, reviewing opening night. "But as Belafonte crooned and swayed, laughed and shouted, they found him more and more irresistible." It would be Westbury Music Fair's "most successful attraction this year," venue co-founder Frank Ford later said, "gross[ing] $205,000 in almost two weeks."

Belafonte returned for a two-week stint beginning on Nov. 24, 1970, joined by newcomer vocalist Eloise Laws as well as The Voices of East Harlem, a group of 15 teenagers. He did a week from April 5-11, 1976, as "Belafonte and International Company," with Ghanian-Ethiopian singer Falumi Prince; famed Brazilian accordionist and guitarist Sivuca, né Severino Dias de Oliveira; American soul singer Rhetta Hughes; and his touring band Kilimanjaro (not the same-name group formed in the 1990s) and backup vocalists the Djoliba Singers.

Belafonte returned in 1987 for a concert series originally announced for Nov. 23-25 and Nov. 27, but the Nov. 25 show did not take place, according to a notice accompanying a review. The star then played two-night stands in consecutive years, on May 3-4, 1989, and Aug. 29-30, 1990 — in that latter year captured by a news photographer outside the Westbury Music Fair stage door, happily holding his dogs Maryann and Matilda.

Other Westbury dates included July 25, 2001, and July 6, 2002.

But one show meant perhaps more to him than others: On June 5, 1992, Belafonte sang at the Tilles Center at Long Island University Post in Brookville — to benefit the Harry Belafonte Scholarship Fund for minority students across six L.I.U. campuses. (The Belafonte Family Foundation now gives scholarships to high school students as well.)