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Entertainment Hollywood

Harry Belafonte, singer and civil right activist, dies at 96

Calypso singer who was a campaigner for black civil rights in the US died of heart failure



Harry Belafonte
Image Credit: AFP

Harry Belafonte, the civil rights and entertainment giant who began as a groundbreaking actor and singer and became an activist, humanitarian and conscience of the world, has died. He was 96.

Belafonte died on Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his New York home, his wife Pamela by his side, said Paula M. Witt, of public relations firm Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis.

Harry Belafonte with his son, David, and second wife, Julie, in 1958.
Image Credit: Washington Post

Belafonte was married three times. He and his first wife Marguerite Byrd had two children, including actress-model Shari Belafonte. He also had two children with second wife Julia Robinson, a former dancer.

With his glowing, handsome face and silky-husky voice, Belafonte was one of the first Black performers to gain a wide following on film and to sell a million records as a singer; many still know him for his signature hit “Banana Boat Song (Day-O),” and its call of “Day-O! Daaaaay-O.” But he forged a greater legacy once he scaled back his performing career in the 1960s and lived out his hero Paul Robeson’s decree that artists are “gatekeepers of truth.”

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In this file photo taken on December 06, 2014, US singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte holds his Golden Heart award for his social commitment during the charity gala "Ein Herz fuer Kinder" (A Heart for Children) in Berlin.
Image Credit: AFP

He stands as the model and the epitome of the celebrity activist. Few kept up with Belafonte's time and commitment and none his stature as a meeting point among Hollywood, Washington and the civil rights movement.

James Foreman, executive secretary of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, left, Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., center, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and activist-singer Harry Belafonte appear during a press conference in Atlanta on April 30, 1965.
Image Credit: AP

Belafonte not only participated in protest marches and benefit concerts, but helped organize and raise support for them. He worked closely with his friend and generational peer the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., often intervening on his behalf with both politicians and fellow entertainers and helping him financially. He risked his life and livelihood and set high standards for younger Black celebrities, scolding Jay Z and Beyonce for failing to meet their “social responsibilities,” and mentoring Usher, Common, Danny Glover and many others. In Spike Lee’s 2018 film “BlacKkKlansman,” he was fittingly cast as an elder statesman schooling young activists about the country’s past.

Harry Belafonte (C) laughs with a fellow audience member as they depart after a reception for the 2013 Kennedy Center Honors recipients at the White House in Washington, December 8, 2013.
Image Credit: Reuters
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Born Harold George Bellanfanti in New York's Harlem neighborhood, he moved to Jamaica before returning to New York to attend high school.

He had described his father as an abusive drunk who abandoned him and his mother, leaving Belafonte with a longing for a stable family. He drew strength from his mother, an uneducated domestic worker, who instilled the activist spirit in him.

Singer and Civil Rights activist Harry Belefonte listens to Coretta Scott King, widow of the slain civil rights leader, in Memphis, Tennessee on April 8, 1968.
Image Credit: AP

Belafonte’s friend, civil rights leader Andrew Young, would note that Belafonte was the rare person to grow more radical with age. He was ever engaged and unyielding, willing to take on Southern segregationists, Northern liberals, the billionaire Koch brothers and the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, whom Belafonte would remember asking to cut him “some slack.”

Belafonte responded, “What makes you think that’s not what I’ve been doing?”

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Harry Belafonte demonstrates during the Free South Africa Movement in 1984.
Image Credit: Washington Post

Belafonte had been a major artist since the 1950s. He won a Tony Award in 1954 for his starring role in John Murray Anderson’s “Almanac” and five years later became the first Black performer to win an Emmy for the TV special “Tonight with Harry Belafonte.”

He also won Grammy Awards in 1960 and 1965 and received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2000 but voiced frustration at the limits on Black artists in show business. In 1994, Belafonte was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

Harry Belafonte signs autographs for well-wishers in 1979.
Image Credit: Washington Post

In 1954, he co-starred with Dorothy Dandridge in the Otto Preminger-directed musical “Carmen Jones,” a popular breakthrough for an all-Black cast. The 1957 movie “Island in the Sun” was banned in several Southern cities, where theater owners were threatened by the Ku Klux Klan because of the film’s interracial romance between Belafonte and Joan Fontaine.

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In the 1960s he campaigned with King, and in the 1980s, he worked to end apartheid in South Africa and coordinated Nelson Mandela's first visit to the United States.

'WE ARE THE WORLD' Belafonte traveled the world as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, in 1987 and later started an AIDS foundation. In 2014 he received an Academy Award for his humanitarian work.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela (L) is escorted back to his seat by Harry Belafonte the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Children in New York, May 9, 2002.
Image Credit: Reuters

Belafonte provided the impetus for "We Are the World," the 1985 all-star musical collaboration that raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia. After seeing a grim news report on the famine, he wanted to do something similar to the fund-raising song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by the British supergroup Band Aid a year earlier.

"We Are the World" featured superstars such as Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles and Diana Ross and raised millions of dollars.

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Harry Belafonte speaks to a crowd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington during a youth march for integration, Oct. 25, 1958.
Image Credit: AP

An anthology of his music was released to mark Belafonte's 90th birthday on March 1, 2017. A few weeks before the launch, Belafonte told Rolling Stone magazine that singing was a way for him to express injustices in the world.

"It gave me a chance to make political commentary, to make social statements, to talk about things that I found that were unpleasant - and things that I found that were inspiring," he said.

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