Harry Belafonte, orig. Harold George Belafonte, Jr., (born March 1, 1927, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died April 25, 2023, New York, N.Y., U.S.), U.S. singer, actor, producer, and activist. He was born to immigrants from Martinique and Jamaica, and he lived with his mother in Jamaica from 1935 to 1940. In the early 1950s he popularized calypso music with songs such as “Day-O (Banana Boat Song)” and “Jamaica Farewell.” He starred in the films Carmen Jones (1954) and Island in the Sun (1957) and later became the first Black television producer in the U.S. Belafonte was also a prominent civil-rights activist and a close friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. From the 1970s onward his singing career was a secondary occupation, and he acted in films such as Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Kansas City (1996), Bobby (2006), and BlacKkKlansman (2018). Belafonte received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2014, and in 2022 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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