Harry Belafonte, the famed singer, actor, and human rights activist, has died at 96

• Award-winning singer, songwriter, actor and activist, Harry Belafonte has died at age 96.
• The famed entertainer and activist began his career during the 1940s and was heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Award-winning Caribbean folk singer, actor, and human rights activist Harry Belafonte has died.

The cause of death was congestive heart failure, a spokesperson told The New York Times.

Belafonte was 96.

Belafonte's legacy in entertainment spans many decades, first beginning in the mid 1940s when he discovered his love of the arts at a segregated theater in New York. Since then, he has claimed Grammy, Tony, and Emmy awards for his unique style of folk music and songwriting, but his most salient work was fighting for civil rights alongside his late friends Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sidney Poitier.

Belafonte never missed an opportunity to use his platform in the arts to shine a light on issues facing the world.

"I take advantage of these forums," Belafonte said during a talk with The Aspen Institute in 2015, "just in case there's something someone needed to hear, and I was the embodiment of that information," he said. "I don't have to worry about my conscience, that I had an opportunity to take advantage of a platform and didn't use it."

Growing up the son of Jamaican immigrants

Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. on March 1, 1927, to Melvine and Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., in Harlem, New York. The Bellanfantis were immigrants from Jamaica.

As Belafonte describes, he grew up in a "ghetto inside a ghetto." His neighborhood, a West Indian immigrant community, was a pocket inside the larger Black community in Harlem.

In 1932, after Belafonte's parents divorced, he was sent to live in Jamaica with his grandmother. Upon returning to New York in 1940, he enrolled at George Washington High School but later dropped out to enlist in the Navy, serving in World War II.

After returning from the war, he worked as a club singer and a janitor for an apartment building. In December 1945, one of the tenants gave him tickets to see his first show at the American Negro Theater, titled "Home is the Hunter," written by Samuel M. Kootz. He instantly fell in love with acting.

Soon after, Belafonte began volunteering as a stagehand at the American Negro Theater and later ran across Sidney Poitier while attending acting classes there.

They built an unbreakable bond over the years.

In Belafonte's first acting performance, he was cast in "On Shriver's Row." However, he fell ill the night of his first performance and Poitier stepped in as his understudy.

Work during the Civil Rights Movement

Belafonte's mentors on civil rights were the late Paul Robeson and Dr. Martin Luther King.

His awakening came at the age of 7 when he watched his mother, Melvine, a dressmaker and a house cleaner, come home from work with barely any money to pay the bills. She told him to pay attention to injustice and never miss an opportunity to fight against it.

In his memoir, "My Song: A Memoir," published in 2011, Belafonte wrote that Paul Robeson, a fellow artist and activist in his own right, was a critic of US policy and linked the struggle for civil rights for Black Americans in the US to the struggles against Western colonialism in Africa. Belafonte wrote that Robeson was his "first great formative influence" and gave him his "backbone."

He also wrote that Dr. King "nourished" his soul.

Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, Belafonte made his presence known even if he physically couldn't be there because of his commitments as an actor and singer.

In 1963, when Dr. King was arrested and sent to the Birmingham jail after protesting segregation, Belafonte participated in the efforts to raise money for King's bail and the subsequent Freedom rides during that time.

Upon request by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader John Forman, in 1964, during the height of Freedom Summer, Belafonte honored Forman's request for $50,000 for demonstrators in Mississippi. Within 72 hours, Belafonte, alongside his close friend Poitier gathered $70,000 and waded through being chased by armed Klansmen to deliver the money in Greenwood, Mississippi.

A star in the entertainment industry

Belafonte found stardom in 1954 as Joe in the box office hit, "Carmen Jones." He received an Academy Award nomination for his performance.

That movie catapulted his career not just in acting, but in music. In 1956 he released "Calypso," an album featuring traditional Caribbean folk music. "Banana Boat (Day-O)," a song on the album, became a huge hit. The album became the first million-selling LP record by a single artist. He later earned the nickname King of Calypso.

"That song is a way of life," Belafonte told The New York Times. "It's a song about my father, my mother, my uncles, the men and women who toil in the banana fields, the cane fields of Jamaica."

In the following decades in entertainment, he would choose acting as his primary art form. He starred in "Buck and the Preacher" and 1974's "Uptown Saturday Night." His later films included "White Man's Burden" and 2006's "Bobby," a film about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

A critic of US foreign policy

Over his career, Belafonte used his platform to speak out against injustices happening around the world. As the anti-colonialism global movement took shape in the late 1950s and early '60s, Belafonte became a prominent voice.

Belafonte began to support African artists such as Miriam Makeba, otherwise known as "Mama Africa." Together, they won a Grammy for Best Folk Recording in 1966. He exposed her to American audiences playing a key role in bringing attention to life under South African apartheid.

Belafonte said the US blockade on Cuba "pleased the right-wing Cuban-American community in Miami."

In his memoir, he wrote: "I disagreed with almost every tenet of US foreign policy, from the Cold War freeze on any relations with Iron Curtain countries, to Vietnam and its aftermath, to the backing of right-wing tyrants through Africa and Latin America. But I felt a special frustration with America's stance toward an island close to home: not Grenada, but Cuba. To me, Fidel Castro was still the brave revolutionary who'd overthrown a corrupt regime and was trying to create a socialist utopia."

Over the years, Belafonte angered those within the US political establishment for his vehement critique of US relations abroad.

In 2016 and 2020, Belafonte endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

"I think he represents a moral imperative. I think he represents a certain kind of truth that is not often evidenced in the course of politics," Belafonte said in an announcement of his support.

Fight for human rights

Belafonte won several humanitarian awards throughout his lifetime, perhaps most notably, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2014. He was also awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his "outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes." His longtime friend Poitier presented the award to him during the Oscars that year.

Belafonte also received Cuba's Friendship Medal from the Cuban Council of State for his humanitarian efforts and commitment to advocating for human rights.

In 1994, Belafonte received the National Medal of the Arts. He had been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 1987.

Belafonte is survived by his wife Pamela Frank, four children, two stepchildren, and eight grandchildren.