Harry Belafonte died at 96 due to heart failure

He was 96.

It is  Reported that Belafonte died of congestive heart failure on Tuesday morning.

After the groundbreaking success of his 1956 hit, "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)," Belafonte was dubbed the "King of Calypso." After appearing in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical "Carmen Jones," he also became a movie star.

However, Belafonte made the most significant contributions off-screen. He was an important civil rights movement strategist, fundraiser, and mediator. For his activism, he put his career in entertainment at risk on a regular basis and, at least once, his life. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. became a close friend of his, and he often went to Belafonte's grand apartment in New York to talk about strategy or get away from the pressures of leading the civil rights movement.

An insatiable peruser with a consuming scorn for foul play, Belafonte's political cognizance was molded by the experience of growing up as the ruined child of an unfortunate Jamaican mother who functioned as a homegrown worker.