♪ >> Hello everyone and welcome to "Amanpour and Company."

Here is what is coming up.

>> Helping Ukraine win that war is absolutely vital.

>> We talk to New Hampshire's governor.

Why he thinks on his Republican colleagues have lost a moral compass, and will he run for president?

>> I knew there would be a struggle because struggle was a part of my life.

>> The chart topping superstar who dedicated his life to activism.

We bring you my interview with the late, great Harry Belafonte.

>> They became these icons of defiance.

>> How black players transformed basketball and American society.

Speaking to Michelle Martin about her new book on the generation that saved the NBA.

>> "Amanpour and Company" is made possible by the Anderson Family Fund, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.

Candace King Weir.

Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams.

The Family Foundation of Leila and Mickey Straus.

Mark J. Blechner.

Seton J. Melvin.

Bernard and Denise Schwartz.

Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg.

We try to live in the moment, to not miss what is right in front of us.

At Mutual of America, we believe taking care of tomorrow and help you make the most of today.

Mutual of America Financial group, retirement services and investments.

Additional support provided by these funders.

And by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> Welcome to the program.

It is a busy day in the nation's capital as South Korea's president comes to town while tensions mount in Asia.

The president is probably eager to smooth out tensions between them after a Pentagon leak exposed the U.S. eavesdrops even on its allies.

The leaders are set to announce more U.S. support amid growing nuclear threats from North Korea.

Earlier today, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart in a much awaited phone call.

The conversation was meaningful but will it exert its influence on President Putin?

With so many challenges and questions, a seat at America's table may seem like a poisoned chalice.

But more and more, jumping into the 2024 presidential race.

New Hampshire's Republican Governor Chris Sununu joins me.

He carved out a very different path.

Governor Sununu, welcome to the program.

>> Pleasure to be here.

>> It seems to be presidential candidacy.

We have seen the president himself has called again for voters to give him a second term.

I want to know if you are about to throw your hat in the ring and the famous Kennedy question, fellow New Englander, why do you want to be president?

>> Two very good questions.

We'll make a decision this summer.

They really want things to get done.

Washington just hasn't got a lot done in terms of providing opportunities.

I am a Republican.

I want to make my party bigger.

I want independence to get on board.

I want the younger generation that have been disenfranchised to get back on the team.

I am not one of these people who yells at people.

I don't think anyone gets inspired by being yelled at.

I woke up in the United States of America.

Let's start with a sense of gratitude.

When it comes to why, I will compare myself to Kennedy but New England governors know how systems work.

We don't just talk about more money to mental health, we talk about what is happening in our schools.

We don't just talk about more money to drug and overdoses.

We talk about how we rebuild the system to be more modern, have wraparound services, really attach themselves to the community.

We are very community driven.

People are looking for people who know how the systems work.

It is not about political stance or saying one thing and getting nothing done, it is about taxes, getting back to the basics, putting people first.

I am the governor.

I am not here to solve your problems.

We are here to create opportunity.

I am from the live free or die state.

>> You also sound very sensible.

Sensible is not the term one might use for the strongest wing of your party right now.

What I want to ask you is a serious question about how you are a four-time governor in a purple state, neither very Republican nor very Democratic.

That means you have to work by consensus on issues that matter to people.

Last election he won by 15 points.

Can you translate that into a primary win where there is much flame-throwing being done?

Particularly by Donald Trump.

>> Everyone wants a fighter.

We have to remind people that more important than being a fighter is being a winner.

No use in having a fighter if they don't get stuff done.

A lot of us backed former President Trump in '16 and in '20.

I was 100% behind him.

He said he was going to drain the swamp.

He did not do it.

He said he was going to be fiscally responsible.

Under him, $8 trillion were added to debt.

That is real money.

Those are all Republican values.

Local control, that is what Republicans are built on, that is what we can all rally around.

I understand there is a lot of headlines and flame during on the one side.

Not dissimilar to the Democrats.

They have their extreme side of their base with socialism and that sort of thing but most of us are in here, Republican or Democrat.

Most of us just want to get stuff done.

As the debates transpire and the arguments get made, there will be a path, an opportunity for people like me to step forward and drive forward on results driven leadership.

You have to know how to work within the public sphere, how to actually lead Congress, lead the Senate, give a little to get a lot.

How to negotiate.

If you can't, nothing will ever get done.

That is the crux, to negotiate, to get things done for people.

As in your father's generation, he worked for a more moderate Republican while he was governor.

He worked in the White House.

We have seen how that works for people.

Does it concern you that the latest poll shows 71% of Republicans say they think Trump should be president again?

That drops only eight points to 63%.

Even if Trump is convicted of a crime.

It is pretty dire for your vision of politics for the people and getting things done.

>> No.

I am very optimistic.

I think what those polls are saying, people see the indictment coming down.

If you watch CNN or MSNBC, those very liberal legal analysts say this is a very weak case.

It is very politically driven.

People support him because they feel like the people are going after him in a very political way.

They have to show that support.

Does that translate to an actual vote in the ballot box, on the ballot nine months from now?

Not necessarily at all.

We haven't even had the debate yet, a chance to narrow down the candidates.

There is still so much more politics to be played out.

I think a lot of people are showing support for the president because he feels like he is left wing, the liberal elite.

He is playing the victim card.

This guy was supposed to be a fighter but he is playing the victim card and he is building a lot of sympathy from it but I don't think it translates into some overwhelming win in terms of the ballot box.

Republicans want winners and people who get stuff done.

Not just winners in the nomination.

That is easy.

Winners win in November.

You can't govern if you don't win.

Unless we have someone who can cross that finish line in November, I think that argument will be loud and clear from a variety of different sources.

I think voters will say they may be picking that guy but in 2022 midterms, the Trump-picked candidates by and large were not winners as you just said.

Perhaps the Republicans will be able to rally around that very important fact.

Here's what I want to ask you.

Governor DeSantis has not thrown his hat in the ring.

He may take on Donald Trump.

We are in this crisis of disinformation, political polarization, all sorts of populist and other lies, just the idea that it seems that some Republicans have been governing according to populist television anchors like Tucker Carlson, suggesting migrants be sent up to your part of the country in the summer.

That is what DeSantis did.

It was kind of weird.

I just wonder whether you think that is still going to be something you all have to pay attention to.

Populist television and other talk show hosts on the conservative side.

>> Just like Joe Biden.

I think we do have to be careful of that populist mentality.

Then you have Joe Biden who wants to pay everybody's loans off.

They want to keep the free rent program going on.

We would just whistle past the graveyard when it comes to this massive homeless crisis in places like California.

These are the places that Democrats should do very well.

The populist voices are out there.

I think it is a problem on both sides.

I think both sides have to deal with it.

The people of America want winners, they want people to get stuff done.

I get the primary process is hard.

There is too much money in politics.

We all get that.

I think there should be massive campaign finance reform.

I was at an event with Speaker Pelosi and she said all this dark money going in there that effectively allows incumbents to solidify themselves, you add gerrymandering on to that, it is a major problem.

The genie is kind of out of the bottle with that.

The gerrymandering, the big money, these are real problems that could allow people to go and almost push people deeper into the right corner, force them to take more extreme positions because they are afraid of being challenged by their own party than the other side.

That is at the crux of it.

You have social media and the fact that everyone just wants to sell advertising and all that.

That is not going away.

My message to everybody is we need to learn to be more truthful, honest, accountable within that dynamic.

Fox found some accountability and they took some action.

CNN, other social media outlets have to be accountable to themselves.

One way or another, our words matter, whether it is how we treat people, what we say and not putting up the truth or whatever it might be.

We are in a transitional time to be sure.

There will be a new normal where everybody has a voice.

Accountability gets raised.

>> I think you are laying out your case very clearly for a pragmatic way to get things done for the people.

Let's talk about our international audience who is very concerned about where America's foreign policy will continue to go.

We talked about DeSantis.

He clearly tripped up and did not understand the stakes in Ukraine when he called Russia's invasion just a territorial dispute.

His own party and many others obviously pushed back.

You have said in your Washington Post column, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not a territorial dispute as Ron DeSantis described it.

Russia is engaged in a war against an innocent people and it must be condemned.

Can you elaborate on how you would continue the fight to support the rules of the international road by defending Ukraine?

>> Absolutely.

America's strength as a world power has to be predicated on clarity.

Our allies know we will be with them.

Our enemies know we have resolve.

We will not dip our toe in and out.

That is not what we are about.

We are based in the fundamentals of freedom and supporting those that would later life on the line for freedom, building allies, building coalitions, fighting for that and supporting it.

Not just supporting Ukraine but winning that war.

Helping Ukraine when that war is vital.

We don't need put troops on the ground but we can support them and do that.

That sends a message across the world.

Through our strength and economic success, we help our allies and support everybody else but you need to be very clear in that.

Whether you're wishy-washy because you are putting your finger into the wind and testing the political winds, that is not acceptable on the international stage.

I think Reagan was a big believer in that and I support that very much.

It doesn't mean we can just wave a magic wand and be everybody's Police Department department and solve everybody's problems but with our strength and clarity of message, it brings a calming if you will.

Your allies know you will be there.

Your enemies know they better watch out.

>> Are you concerned by what some people are concerned about?

The former Republican Treasury Secretary recently told the "FT" this is about China.

I strongly believe President Biden would like to stabilize the China relationship but both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have staked out a very strong line which complicates things for Biden.

In addition to that, retired admiral William H. McRaven, whom we all know very well, the former head of U.S. special ops to capture bin Laden, said this on our program yesterday about China.

Take a listen.

>> We need to find common ground with China.

We need to find common ground on trade, something so that when things do get tense, we have avenues of conversation.

I was talking to a senior official in the White House who said they have more conversations with Russia than they do with China.

That is not good.

>> He spoke to Walter Isaacson.

Do you believe there actually needs to be a more pragmatic way of dealing with this massive competitor?

Do you think this is something that might accidentally push the U.S. into war?

>> I think he was exactly right.

You need to establish relations and have communication.

Even Reagan could pick up the phone at any time and call Gorbachev on any issue but the Biden administration doesn't even talk to China, they don't even go over it.

Make no mistake, China is no friend of the United States right now.

They don't believe in capitalism or Western ideals but we will have to be partners in some realm economically and for other reasons for quite some time.

So let's make sure we have that relationship, make sure they know who is in charge.

You can't assert your authority over the partnership if you are not even willing to pick up the phone and have a conversation.

This administration, I think the Secretary of State has to take full responsibility.

It has been a complete disaster when it comes to maintaining our strength over the Pacific, maintaining our position with that relationship.

Whether it is technology, batteries, materials and supplies, we are just going to have to be partners with them and rely on them for a lot of their supply chain in the near term.

You better have a relationship with them.

They don't need to be our buddy but they should know who is in charge.

Just pick up the phone.

How do you know where they are?

What is happening?

They are looking to establish their own reserve currency.

That is a real threat to America's economy because they feel disrespected, like we won't even have a conversation with them.

I think that America's clarity of message, clarity of where we stand with all world leaders is really important in terms of making sure there is peace and opportunity for Americans in our economy.

>> Thank you very much, Governor.

When did you say you are throwing your hat into the ring?

When will that announcement come?

>> Maybe by dinner.

We will see how the day goes.

I am not 100 percent sure.

Probably early summer.

I think everyone probably needs to figure out all of this by early summer.

All the logistics have to happen and really force the discussion.

It will take six or seven months to really start sorting this thing out.

Hopefully everyone gets on the debate stage.

Trump says he won't but you can't say you're a fighter if you are afraid to have a conversation on a debate stage.

You don't want him to wimp out on us but we will see what ultimately happens.

It will be a roller coaster for the next six to nine months.

>> We hope to invite you back again.

Thank you very much, Governor.

>> Tributes continue to pour in for Harry Belafonte.

He was a beloved ambassador around the boat for this country, for the United States.

Not just as a superstar and a heartthrob but because of his passionate defense of civil rights.

One of the last remaining leaders of that movement.

He died peacefully in his sleep at 96 after a life exceptionally well lived.

Today, his face graces the front pages as tributes continue to pour in.

Bernice King tweeted this image of Belafonte at her father's funeral.

She writes that he showed up for her family in their compassionate ways.

Even paying for many of their expenses.

We want to go back to his last interview with us, talking about his extraordinary life from poverty to a lasting place in his dream.

Harry Belafonte, welcome to the program.

>> I am happy to be here.

>> I am fascinated by your childhood and how you went on to become not just an activist and entertainer but there was abuse, you talk about your father, what shaped you from the earliest days?

>> You mentioned it.

Poverty.

My mother was a single parent.

She was having children much too young.

She struggled to raise us.

My father was an alcoholic.

Very violent most of the time away from home.

I watched what poverty did to her.

Through the years of growing up and watching her struggle, using her instinctual genius to survive days through that struggle, I was required to make a commitment to always fight injustice.

>> Yes, that was her counsel to me.

Never go to bed at night knowing there was something you could have done during the day to fight injustice and failed to do it.

I think with that instruction, my life was kind of launched into this commitment.

>> Don't fast-forward.

You went away to the Navy and you write in your book that you hoped you would come back to a freer America where there were voting rights, where there was democracy and yet you found still it was a country of lynchings and of oppression against Blacks.

>> Many of us volunteered to be in the service in the Second World War.

It was an opportunity to get away from our conditions and circumstances.

The Navy gave us discipline, objectives we could work toward.

There is also more deeply underlined fact.

This war was a war we had to be in.

It was white supremacy, fascism.

All the things we said we wanted to defeat.

America was on its way to fulfilling its promise of democracy.

When we came out expecting the victors would be adorned with the generosity for what we had done, we found America was even more cruel than when we left.

We had raised issues resurrected.

Many servicemen were in conflict with the rules of the day.

We found ourselves launched into this great fight against these discriminatory laws.

A lot of black servicemen paid a terrible price because they resented the laws they came back to.

One had both of his eyes blinded.

He became a ward of the state for the rest of his life.

Those images and those experiences really made those of us who still...feel that we have another fight on our hands.

You can acquiesce and do what many forbearers chose to do which is give into the system or resist the system which is the forerunner of all the things about the civil rights movement.

>> All the things we know about your really close relationship with Martin Luther King.

Around that time he came knocking on your door figuratively.

What was your first encounter with him?

>> He called to find out whether or not he could have a meeting with me because he was coming to New York.

I was just getting up the letter.

He knew I was an activist.

For him, they caught up about the boys.

Dr. King knew of my relationship to these people and the causes to which they were committed but he said he was coming to New York and he needed to have just a moment with me.

I knew at the end of our exchange I wanted to be in his service.

>> This is an amazing picture.

It is not the first time you met but it is such an unusual picture of joy and humor between you.

Was there that as well and the sadness and toughness of the movement?

>> I insisted on it.

I knew how grim things were and his preoccupation was always with pain, violence.

The anguish over these.

Each decision he had to make, he troubled over it very much because he did not know what was over the end of the tunnel.

Anything he could do I thought was important conversation.

>> Martin Luther King is known for nonviolence.

There was so much violence against the black community.

He decided to resist through nonviolence.

Is that what attracted you to him?

>> What attracted me to him was his idea that he could beat the system and that we should do it through this mechanism called nonviolence.

That was alien to me.

I knew about Gandhi and what he had done.

All the equations suggested to us that you would have to be at least 100 million people and those who occupy your country should be in the minority.

It would be easy to be nonviolent because you could overrun them.

In America, we were what, 10, 12% of the population?

We were distributed through these pockets of ghetto existence.

I always felt that the idea of nonviolence was not a winnable idea.

Slowly but surely, I saw his method and his technique and then the strategy that is then could work.

I became deeply committed to it.

At first I became -- as I got grounded into the whole of nonviolence, it was the only tool that we had that could really make a difference.

>> It must have taken a lot of strength to remain committed.

I look at these images that you live through, the violence would come to a lunch counter and just threw the Blacks that were sitting at the counter, the hoses on the streets that were directed at men and women and children.

The dogs that were set on you all, the police.

Describe that.

You confronted all of that.

>> Yes.

We confronted all of it.

That is where our pain resided.

We had to go to places where the enemy was the strongest.

Where all the laws were being designed and administered.

The South was a brutal place to be.

The North had its own problems.

At least it wasn't a state law.

These were laws on books that police are required to execute.

We were in the middle of doing battle.

Each day, you set out to do any of these things, certainly Dr. King and others were far more engaged then I was in the physical sense.

We knew we were putting our lives on the line.

In the broadcast I did for the Tonight Show, I hosted for a week and Dr. King was one of the guests.

In the interview I had with Dr. King, I asked if he was concerned about his life and he pointed out that like all people he would have lived a long life.

He would have liked to live a long life.

A life of longevity.

He was not too distracted with how long he would live.

>> You lost your greatest friend and your greatest life partner in the struggle.

Were you afraid the struggle would die without him?

>> I was concerned about what would happen with the struggle.

It is all about the history of being black in America.

Here we were on yet another round.

>> When John Kennedy came to the forefront and was running for president, did you think you would be on your side?

>> We thought we had every reason for him to be on our side.

Our job was to make them understand the way he was looking at the black community was through a very narrow prism.

He needed to be with us in a far more in-depth way.

I can't say the black vote was the only vote that helped him win but if you look at how narrow the margin of victory was for him, 100,000 votes -- I think one can say had the luck not turned out the way it did, those of us that could vote -- >> Was there a fear that it could have turned violent?

>> With or without Dr. King.

Violence was life.

Nobody seems to have any kind of line about who would be the next to go.

Whether you are a peasant, a farmer to try to register to vote or a black person walking on the wrong side of the street.

We were always aware of the fact that everything -- >> When you see some of the civil rights struggles of today, many have taken up arms to struggle for their civil rights.

You always stayed on the nonviolent side.

Was there ever a threat that the American civil rights movement could have become a violent movement?

Could it have fought back against the establishment of guns and rocks and stones?

Here in America, many would have us believe -- it was a thing of the past.

Nothing could be more misleading than that fact.

It is a great device by the opposition to try to lessen the impact.

>> Is there still slavery here?

>> Yes.

There is still slavery here.

>> What is it?

>> The slavery of oppression, the absence of opportunity.

Slavery of unemployment, of the manipulation of politics.

One of the most important gifts civilization has ever been given.

Freedom give us the right to debate.

The point that I am making is everybody thought the most difficult thing facing civilization was the Cold War.

The fact is communism imploded.

Anywhere I went during the time of nonviolence, the most important person to people was Dr. King.

Everything we did was in nonviolence.

Everybody was saying we want freedom.

How can you see civil rights as dead?

>> Thank you very much.

>> His voice will be missed.

Harry Belafonte.

A passionate global advocate for civil rights until the very end.

In her new book, a professor of African-American history details how black basketball players were pivotal in the transformation of the game.

>> Professor Teresa, thank you so much for talking with us.

>> Thank you for inviting me to come on.

This book is a history of professional basketball from the '50s through the '70s.

Why this title?

>> This is in terms of the transformation of basketball over the course of the '70s.

Just thinking about the blackballing of players and the exclusion of them from the week.

Also, the ways in which the team owners who were all at that time made sure they kept control over their labor force.

The fact that there was a transition.

Also, the fact that people are so used to seeing these players as many corporations now.

>> Spencer Haywood was kind of a mover and shaker in this new generation of black players.

He was the first ever hardship draft.

The NBA for a long time had been the only game in town.

In order to compete with the NBA, they created something called the hardship because -- hardship clause.

They can draft underclassmen out of college even if they haven't used up all of their college eligibility because at the time, the NBA had this draconian four-year rule.

Which prevented players from the college ranks or even the high school ranks to go into the draft.

Spencer Haywood took advantage of the situation, to his competing against each other and he managed to get a contract with the Denver Rockets of the ABA.

He supposedly had a million-dollar contract.

Your contract is probably not worth what they said it was worth in the media.

He ended up going to an agent.

The contract was actually fraudulent in a lot of ways.

They promised things that just would not pan out.

Rather than staying in that position, he tried to renegotiate the contract.

What is important to understand in the context of the 1970's is that you did not have a lot of leverage as a black basketball player going into talks with a white team owner.

You did not have a lot of leeway to say I am in the midst of my contract but I want to renegotiate it.

He ended up suing or counter suing the Denver rockets.

And then turns to the Seattle Supersonics of the NBA.

The NBA did not say come on in, come on and play.

They prevented him from playing.

If they did not have that pillowcase and the chutzpah to challenge the entire white basketball establishment, people like Lebron James would not be where they are today, they would not be able to enter the league on their own terms.

>> Talk about the style and aesthetic.

One of the things the ABA did was give the players more freedom to play the way they might have played growing up.

Street ball style.

Talk about how that was perceived.

>> Black players used the availability of positions in this new league to come to dominate the game.

In some respects, the ABA, you think of Dr. J, Julius Irving, bringing that kind of playground -- we're talking about the aerial play, we are talking about trash talking which we have been talking about a lot lately.

With LSU and the women's game recently.

All of that was brought to the game in the context of black players really flooding the professional ranks at that time.

They did that in spite of the powers that be.

>> You talk about the fact that the '70s were sometimes referred to as the dark days.

We can obviously unpack all the levels of that but can't talk about why it is referred to that way?

>> The 1970's are often is forgotten time of NBA history.

The '70s were really key.

An age when players were getting into trouble.

When they were becoming more entitled, when they were getting lazy, when they were using drugs, when they were fighting on the court, when I started to see all of these narratives about the league's decline.

Contesting the power of the owners, there was this kind of backlash against their efforts to change the game and so they got painted as trouble, as troublesome players.

>> Len Bias, a highly sought after recruit, he did die from a cocaine overdose.

It was very traumatic.

Do you not think it was reasonable to trace that back and see how this happened?

What do you think about that?

>> It is interesting that you go to him because this project, the book I wrote actually came out of the prehistory of his story.

He was drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1986 and died of a cocaine overdose.

All of the sudden, his image became almost weaponized by President Ronald Reagan and the Republicans were trying to push through legislation and the war on drugs.

You have the 1986 antidrug drug act which brings in all of these punitive measures that help to ramp up mass incarceration in the United States.

I was wondering why is it that he as a basketball player beyond just his individual tragedy as somebody who took drugs, why did he become the symbol that drove all this legislation?

One of the things I found in going back through the 1970's was the various efforts to really paint the drug problem in sports as an African-American problem.

In the fact that these guys were so hyper visible only led to more and more discourse about the fact that these guys were making too much money, they were living the fast life and out of control.

It became a microcosm of larger things happening in U.S. society.

Quickly other thing you talk about in the book was professional sports media play such an important role during these decades.

You say it's practically a character in your book.

Can you just talk a little bit about that?

>> What is so interesting is this critique of the white media was actually coming from the players themselves and then also coming from black independent media.

Because they were outlets at that time for example, black sports magazine which was a black run, black-owned sports magazine targeted at black fans and they also noted the fact that white sports journalists tended to uncritically repeat the press releases of the team owners in the league without actually digging into whether or not they are really going out of business.

Our player salaries actually making these teams go out of business?

Is it really true that 40-75% of the L.A. Times piece in the 1980 said -- is it true that 40-75 percent are on cocaine?

There was no sort of unpacking of that.

Yet you find all of that unpacking, deconstruction critique happening amongst the players themselves and also in black media.

>> Do you think there was ever a reckoning in the field of sports reporting about the role they may have played in shaping perceptions of these athletes?

>> I feel like a lot of the same narratives keep cropping up now in terms of if you look at the way they describe this new generation of black quarterbacks.

If you look at the racial discourse around the women's NCAA final as this racial contest between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, we see these narratives still being replayed and repurposed for a new era.

One of the things I think I try to do in the book was to say, hey, if we systematically analyze what people were saying in the context of that time, one can see a pattern here.

>> People remember in the wake of the death of George Floyd and also in the wake of Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback, it became a huge story.

Kneeling during the national anthem, it was this huge issue in the NFL, players were kind of put on the spot like are you where us or not with us on this?

It just seemed like it was a very different era for the NBA.

Do you agree?

It does not seem to have been as seismic in the NBA.

>> I think the NBA, because of those earlier struggles in the '70s, it is a league where the players have a large degree of individual and collective power.

This is one of the most powerful unions in professional sports.

The rosters are much smaller than those in the NFL so there is a difference from sport to sport in that case.

Because the players have been so active and have always talked about their own labor struggles as being connected to wider struggles, for African-American rights and labor rights, that they have this already long-standing tradition since the 1970's.

Arguably even earlier than that of calling out various forms of racism.

If anything, I think they have pushed the NBA to become a much more progressive league because they realized they have to acknowledge the power of the players and away the NFL seems to be able to still control the narrative.

You have someone like Colin Kaepernick who does this protest and the NFL turns around and basically blackballed him.

That would be hard to have happen in the NBA because of all of these antitrust cases from the earlier time that pointed out blackballing, the four year rule, unfair reserve clause, they did it extremely publicly and they did it collectively and it was everyone from the bench player right up to the superstars.

>> Do you think there is a way in which the struggles of the NBA has affected the culture at large?

You make a compelling case.

Without Spencer Haywood, you say there would be no Lebron.

There would be no Dr. J without Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Do you think that generation of players -- do you think they had an impact beyond their sport?

>> Absolutely.

I think they became icons of a new, kind of more defiant black masculine identity.

One that said we are going to take control of the situation, we're going to figure out how to fight this.

When Oscar Robinson is the name associated with the lawsuit against the NBA that brought down the reserve because, when he was testifying, he understood this was a struggle in which they could not back down because everybody was watching.

I think the hyper visibility of these guys helped to inspire a continued wave of racial activism at that time.

They begin these icons.

I think we overlook that when we talk about the black freedom struggle.

A quick thank you so much for talking with us.

A quick last word goes to Harry Belafonte.

We spent a lot of time on how he remained a dedicated activist to his final days.

We heard about meeting people's democratic needs and their rights.

That remains an open question in the United States.

All these years later, I was struck by what America would look like a decade later.

Here is what he told me.

>> And think what is going on with the tea party, the right wing of the Republican Party has launched an extreme in politics.

This will plague us.

They will be plaguing us 10 years from now.

Those of us who support progressive and liberal politics have our work cut out for us.

We tend to give up the struggle in incremental parts.

We can't afford to do that.

Democracy is a very delicate creature.

It needs a vigilance, it is constant.

>> Of course, he was spot on.

As always, a man with an earning instinct.

The struggle continues and the torch is passed to a new generation.

Thank you for watching and goodbye from New York.

We want to leave you with one of Harry Belafonte's biggest hits, "Jamaica Farewell," performed back in 1966.

♪