An original printed poster from the collection of the American singer, actor, and activist, with hand-coloring and hand-painted detailing for "The Empire Room Presents: An Evening with Belafonte," with Emil Coleman and His Orchestra and Bela Babai "King of the Gypsies" and His Orchestra. The poster, from circa the 1950s-1960s, is mounted on board. 29.5 x 40 inches. 

Belafonte played The Empire Rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York and The Palmer House in Chicago many times. This poster is likely for an event at the Waldorf, where Belafonte, Coleman, and Babai all played regularly. Belafonte's first performance at The Waldorf famously led to the integration of the notoriously segregated hotel and nightclub space, which Belafonte said had been "one of the most racist pieces of real estate in America" in a speech he gave there for The Amy Winehouse Foundation Gala in 2013.

Belafonte told this story many times. After he made his Broadway debut, to great acclaim, in 3 for Tonight in 1955, Claude Philippe--a Frenchman who had come to work for the Waldorf-Astoria--called and asked him to perform. In his memoir My Song (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011) Belafonte writes: 

"When I heard that, I had to laugh. 'Claude,' I said, 'you must have just come from France.'

Everyone in the entertainment world knew the Waldorf had a Jim Crow policy: no black entertainers allowed. You could play in the orchestra if you were black, or maybe work as a substitute waiter, but not take the stage. Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole—none of the major black stars had played the Waldorf, not once. The strict keeper of this policy was Muriel Abbott, a powerful executive in Conrad Hilton’s hotel empire, which included the Waldorf in New York and the Palmer House in Chicago.

'But, Harry,' Philippe explained, 'Muriel eez in Chicago … et nous sommes ici.'

Abbott booked all the acts for the Waldorf’s fabled Empire Room in New York from her Palmer House office in Chicago. But Claude, as the hotel’s new vice president of food and beverage, had authority over the rest of the hotel’s dining spaces, including the Starlight Roof, which had been used simply as a banquet room. Claude’s plan was to turn the Starlight Roof into a new supper club. And for its debut, he had a daring idea: He said he’d book a regular act for the early show, then slide me in for the late show. Audiences would feel they were getting something special, columnists would write it up as news, the Waldorf would make money, and an important color barrier would be broken, which for Claude, God bless him, was as much a reason to do this as it was for me.

Claude kept the show a secret until the week before I opened, on June 1, 1955. Then he took out major ads in all the papers. Now, in addition to cabaret singer Felicia Sanders, the Starlight was offering … me. Abbott was furious, but she knew the Frenchman had outfoxed her; she couldn’t stop the show without causing a scandal. What she could and did do, even after the show was a hit, was start lobbying her superiors to have Claude fired. But with several months left on his contract, Claude took his revenge by hiring all the service staff of color he could: blacks, Hispanics, Asians. And these were union jobs—no one, not even Muriel Abbott, could fire those new waiters without cause.

At the next quarterly accounting, Conrad Hilton’s bookkeepers noted something very unusual: Room service revenues had gone up 30 percent. Those new waiters, knowing how lucky they were to land those jobs, had hustled that room-service food up to the rooms piping hot, and guests had ordered that much more. The Starlight Roof’s revenues had gone way up, too. Somewhere in corporate offices above Muriel Abbott’s little preserve, decisions were made. Claude was kept on, and, despite Abbott’s indignation, I was booked that September into the Empire Room downstairs, and then, directly from there, into the Empire Room at the Palmer House—the first of what would be years of engagements at both. It had taken a secretly liberal Frenchman to test the Waldorf’s color barrier, but what broke it was the jingle. In the end, profit always trumps prejudice" (p. 140).