Musician, actor, Belafonte was an icon in a time of racial discrimination within the US.The staunch defender of civil rights actor has died at his house in New York on the age of 96
The actor, musician and activist Harry Belafonte has died on the age of 96 at his house in Manhattan, New York (USA) resulting from coronary heart failure, as defined by his agent. Belafonte turned a musical and racial icon within the Fifties together with his private music and his staunch protection of the civil rights of African-Americans, who on the time have been segregated.
In the late 50’s it was not frequent to see black actors on the screens. His rise to the Olympus of the American present marked a earlier than and after for African-American artists. There have been musicians like Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald who had transcended all audiences, however Belafonte led to a change of period. In the early Nineteen Sixties, he was the highest-paid African-American actor within the United States.
Born in Harlem however of Caribbean origin, his father was from Jamaica, music was in his veins. He introduced people and conventional music nearer collectively, from upbeat calypso songs like “Matilda” to ballads like “Scarlet Ribbons” or slave songs like “Lead Man Holler.”
His voice and his fantastic demeanor opened the doorways of Hollywood for him. She participated in a number of movies similar to ‘Carmen Jones’ or ‘An island within the Sun’. Although he was dethroned because the quintessential African-American actor by one other good-looking man, Sidney Poitier. Cinema was by no means his precedence. Without leaving celluloid or microphones, Belafonte turned to civil rights.
His friendship with Martin Luther King
A buddy of Martin Luther King, he was a fervent activist for racial equality. His financial state of affairs was comfy and he himself contributed the cash to assist create the Nonviolent Student Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Belafonte by no means hesitated to place cash out of his pocket to get Martin Luther King and different civil rights activists out of jail. He participated within the March on Washington in 1963 and even put him up in his luxurious Manhattan condominium. Belafonte’s condominium turned the house of Martin Luther King when he traveled to New York.
So conscious of the hazard that his buddy, the Reverend Martin Luther King, was operating, that he secretly paid for a life coverage together with his household as beneficiaries. When King was assassinated in 1968, Belafonte turned the coverage over to the household and donated cash to assist them for some time.
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