Harry Belafonte Dies At 96

Legendary crooner, actor and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte has died.

Belafonte, 96, passed Tuesday at his home on Manhattan's Upper West Side. A spokesman told The New York Times the cause of death was congestive heart failure, as the paper reports:

At a time when segregation was still widespread and Black faces were still a rarity on screens large and small, Mr. Belafonte's ascent to the upper echelon of show business was historic. He was not the first Black entertainer to transcend racial boundaries; Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and others had achieved stardom before him. But none had made as much of a splash as he did, and for a few years no one in music, Black or white, was bigger.

As a Caribbean-American musician, Belafonte, largely singlehandedly, made Calypso music an international sensation in the 1950s with hits like “Day-O.”

The Times continues:

He was equally successful as a concert attraction: Handsome and charismatic, he held audiences spellbound with dramatic interpretations of a repertoire that encompassed folk traditions from all over the world — rollicking calypsos like “Matilda,” work songs like “Lead Man Holler,” tender ballads like “Scarlet Ribbons.” By 1959 he was the most highly paid Black performer in history, with fat contracts for appearances in Las Vegas, at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and at the Palace in New York.

Success as a singer led to movie offers, and Mr. Belafonte soon became the first Black actor to achieve major success in Hollywood as a leading man. His movie stardom was short-lived, though, and it was his friendly rival Sidney Poitier, not Mr. Belafonte, who became the first bona fide Black matinee idol.

Over his career, Belafonte won three Grammys, one Emmy and a Tony Award. He became the first artist to have a record album sell over one million copies.

Besides music, Belafonte became known for his activism during the Civil Rights Movement, where he was a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr.

After the late 1950s, he became increasingly involved in a variety of liberal causes.

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