MANHATTAN (CelebrityAccess) – Singer, actor and social justice activist Harry Belafonte passed away today (April 25) at his home in Manhattan. The cause of death was congestive heart failure, confirmed by his representative, Ken Sunshine. He was 96.
The Tony and Emmy award-winner and songwriter of “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” featured in the hit movie Beetlejuice was an accomplished singer and actor. However, he was perhaps best known for his tireless work as an activist for several causes – telling The Washington Post, “I wasn’t an artist who’d become an activist. I was an activist who’d become an artist.”
Born in 1927 to a working-class Harlem family of Jamaican heritage, he spent part of his childhood in his parent’s homeland. According to The Guardian, he returned to the city for high school but suffered from the learning disorder dyslexia and dropped out of school in his early teens.
Signing himself over to the Navy in March 1944, he worked as a munitions loader at a military base located in New Jersey. After becoming interested in the American Negro Theatre, he began to take acting classes, paid for by singing gigs at New York clubs.
His debut album was released in 1954, and his second effort, Belafonte in March 1956. However, his third album, Calypso, brought him to the forefront, selling more than a million copies in the US. In addition, the song mentioned above, “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” spent several weeks on the UK singles chart, including three of those at the No. 2 spot.
Throughout his career, he released 30 albums collaborating with Lena Horne and Miriam Makeba. He is the recipient of two Grammy awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Academy’s President of Merit accolade.
Belafonte was the first Black man to win a Tony Award on Broadway for his interpretation of American and Caribbean folk music in John Murray Anderson’s Almanac (1953). Six years later, he was the first African American producer to receive an Emmy Award for his CBS special, Tonight With Belafonte. The trailblazer was also the first Black man to fill in for host Johnny Carson on NBC’s The Tonight Show.
After meeting Dr. Martin Luther King in 1956, Belafonte immersed himself in activism, saying that King was a life-changing presence throughout his life. He used his platform to raise money alongside industry friends like Henry Fonda, Frank Sinatra, and Marlon Brando for the Freedom Rides in 1964 against segregation.
With his activism, Belafonte lobbied for the release of Nelson Mandela and civil rights leaders, opened his home on Manhattan’s West End to movement leaders and Justice Department officials, and helped create TransAfrica, among many other instances of tireless social work.
He was one of the men behind the magic for the song “We Are the World,” raising tens of millions for medical and food supplies, which Belafonte himself helped deliver to places such as Africa and Sudan.
He was the second American, after Danny Kaye, to receive the title “Goodwill Ambassador” for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. He also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2014.
He is survived by his wife, Pamela Frank; children Shari Belafonte, Adrienne Biesemeyer, Gina Belafonte, and David Belafonte, two step-children, Sarah and Lindsey Frank; and eight grandchildren.
RIP.
