Performer and legend of civil rights movement Harry Belafonte dies aged 96

The award-winning singer and actor whose career spanned decades turned his fame and fortune to the causes of racial inequality and human rights.

Honoree Harry Belafonte accepts the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award onstage during the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences' 2014 Governors Awards in 2014. Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Actor, singer and activist Harry Belafonte has died at his home in New York.

His agency confirmed his passing on Tuesday, after the 96-year-old suffered congestive heart failure.

The legendary performer traversed the performing arts with successful records and movies, and became significant in the civil rights movement as well.

He counted many of the last century's most influential figures among his personal friends.

Born in Harlem in 1927, Belafonte spent some his first years in Jamaica with his grandmother. Suffering from the deprivations of poverty, Belafonte would learn a sympathy for the downtrodden that defined his life.

He took acting classes in the 1940s alongside Marlon Brando and Bea Arthur, paying for them with nighttime appearances in the jazz clubs of New York.

Portrait of American actor and singer Harry Belafonte. Belafonte was known as the "King of Calypso", circa 1955. Credit: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

He would go on to find much success in both fields. He created history with his album 'Calypso', an LP of songs infused with the Caribbean sensibility of his family's homeland.

It became the first album by a solo artist to sell over a million copies.

Belafonte's film career, spanning decades, also saw him appear many times as a leading man, sometimes controversially so, such as in 1957's 'Island in the Sun', in which his character is suggested to have relations with that of his co-star, Joan Fontaine.

It was a typical example of racism, the prevalence of which saw Belafonte join the frontlines of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. His growing wealth and influence he used for the benefit of the era-defining activism, becoming one of its best known faces.

A crowd of over 10,000 civil rights marchers gathers in the Manhattan Garment Center as Harry Belafonte sings at spiritual at a civil rights rally. Credit: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

He was a friend and benefactor to Martin Luther King Jr, both supplementing his meagre preacher's income and on one occasion bailing him out of prison. He was an organiser and financier of the Freedom Rides and the March on Washington.

They were early examples of activism that would last the rest of his life.

Across the course of his long life he would befriend any number of famous faces, including Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr, JFK, Marlon Brando, Joan Collins and many many more.

His artistic output was similarly prolific, with his career lasting most of his life. His last performance was as an elderly civil rights pioneer in Spike Lee's 2018 'BlacKkKlansman'.

Tributes from performers, politicians and fans poured in from all over the world upon news of his death.