Actor, singer, and activist Harry Belafonte dies at 96

Harry Belafonte, the Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award-winning vocalist, actor, and political activist, has passed away in his home aged 96.

According to Ken Sunshine, Belafonte’s spokesman, the artist died peacefully in his home from congestive heart failure.

A trailblazer of the Calypso genre, Belafonte’s long play album Calypso, released in 1956, was the first of its kind by a solo artist to sell a million copies, and is considered to be Belafonte’s breakthrough album. As a recording artist, he’s perhaps most famous for tracks “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” “Jump in the Line”, and “Jamaica Farewell.” He also received one Grammy Award each for his albums Swing Dat Hammer and An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba in 1960 and 1965, respectively, and was the recipient of the 2000 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Belafonte was no stranger to the stage, either; the artist won the 1954 Tony Award for Best Feature Actor in a Musical for his work on the revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac, where he was involved with such musical numbers as “Mark Twain,” “Acorn in the Meadow,” and “Hold ’em Joe.” His other most notable stage appearance was 1955’s 3 for Tonight, where he starred alongside the revue’s director and choreographer Gower Champion.

Belafonte received an Emmy Award for his nationally-televised television special Tonight With Belafonte in 1959, where he sang a duet with Odetta Holmes of the 1700s children’s song “There’s a Hole in My Bucket,” which went on to hit national charts in 1961.

The artist was heavily involved in political activism as well; a staunch opponent of both racial prejudice in the United States and colonialism in Africa, Belafonte refused to perform in the American South from 1954 until 1961, and was a supporter of both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the former of whom named Belafonte as the cultural advisor of the Peace Corps. He was also a prolific figure in the civil rights movement as a close ally of Martin Luther King Jr., being heavily involved in the Freedom Rides and the Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign.