Harry Belafonte celebrates his first public appearance on a New York City stage in over 30 years as he performs at Manhattan’s Avery Fisher Hall on Sept. 9, 1993.Evy Mages/Reuters
Harry Belafonte, a singer, songwriter and groundbreaking actor who started his entertainment career belting “Day O” in his 1950s hit song “Banana Boat” before turning to political activism, has died at the age of 96.
Belafonte died 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.
As a Black leading man who explored racial themes in 1950s movies, Belafonte would later move on to working with his friend Martin Luther King Jr. during the U.S. civil rights movement in the early 1960s. He became the driving force behind the celebrity-studded, famine-fighting hit song “We Are the World” in…
