*Trailblazing artist and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte has passed away at age 96.
Reps for the musician confirmed that Belafonte died Tuesday morning of congestive heart failure. He passed away at his New York home with his wife Pamela Frank by his side, according to PEOPLE.
The Jamaican-American singer-songwriter released more than 30 albums during his career. His breakthrough album “Calypso” was released in 1956 and was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. In addition to his successful music career, Belafonte appeared in dozens of films. Some of his notable ones include “Buck and the Preacher (1972), “The Angel Levine (1970), “Uptown Saturday Night (1974), and “Grambling’s White Tiger (1992).”
In 1968, Belafonte appeared with English singer Petula Clark on her NBC special. When she touched his forearm during one song, it was the first time a Black man and white woman touched on primetime television.
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Belafonte became the first Black person to win an Emmy Award in 1960 for outstanding performance in a variety or musical program. “The Tonight Show” was the first late-night TV show hosted by a Black person when Belafonte served as a guest host amid nationwide civil rights protests in 1968. He welcomed Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy as guests to the show.
“When Dr. King called me in the first instance, I think he reached out for me because he needed to reach out to a much broader constituency than he had been serving,” Belafonte once said of his first meeting with King, PEOPLE reports. “He said, ‘You know, I don’t know all that will be… I don’t know where this goes. All I do know is that I am compelled to go with it… At the end I told him, ‘I make the commitment, I’m in. I have no idea where this will go either, but I will stay the course no matter what.”
Belafonte became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1987, and received endless accolades throughout his life such as a National Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1994, a Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award, a Lifetime Achievement Grammy from the Recording Academy in 2000.
As PEOPLE reports, Belafonte received honorary degrees from Spelman College, City University of New York, Tufts University, Brandeis University, Long Island University, Bard College, and Columbia University.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Belafonte into the category of Early Influence last year. At the time of his joining, he was the oldest living member of the organization.
According to THR, Belafonte once shared a valuable piece of advice that his mother gave him when he was 5.
“She was tenacious about her dignity not being crushed,” he told NPR. “And one day she said to me — she was talking about coming back from the day when she couldn’t find work — fighting back tears, she said, ‘Don’t ever let injustice go by unchallenged.’ And that really became a deep part of my life’s DNA. A lot of people say to me, ‘When as an artist did you decide to become an activist?’ I say to them, ‘I was long an activist before I became an artist.’ ”
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