A humanitarian known as much for his social justice advocacy as he is for the musical and acting career that originally fueled his fame, Harry Belafonte has for decades been a leading voice on issues from the civil rights battles of the 1960s to South African apartheid to the New York City Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy. This year, he announced in a speech Saturday night, he has a new focus: ending the oppression of women worldwide. And he's calling on Black men to take the lead.

The 86-year-old, once known as the "King of Calypso"—and most recently in the headlines for his pointed criticism of racial disparities in New York City's "Dickensenian" policing policies—delivered the keynote address at a Washington, D.C., gala celebrating the 100th anniversary of the African-American fraternity Phi Beta Sigma. "Let us use this century to be the century when we said we started the mission to end the violence and oppression of women," he urged the group, after being inducted as an honorary member. "Let us never, ever let our children become the abusers to our women that we permitted in our lifetime."

Belafonte lamented what he called "global indifference" to the brutalization of women and said he hoped to raise awareness about the issue in a way similar to that with which the 1985 charity single "We Are the World" drew broad attention to global hunger.