Harry Belafonte

Harold George Belafonte Jr. was an entertainer who used his fame as a weapon for justice with more consistency and courage than perhaps any other artist in American history. His 1956 album Calypso was the first LP by a single artist to sell over a million copies. But Belafonte would have traded every record sale for the progress he helped achieve as one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest confidants and the civil rights movement's most important celebrity fundraiser.

Born in Harlem in 1927, the son of Jamaican immigrants, Belafonte served in the Navy during World War II and studied acting alongside Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier, and Tony Curtis at the Dramatic Workshop in New York. He turned to music when acting roles for Black men proved scarce, and his charisma, good looks, and Caribbean-inflected style made him an international sensation.

Belafonte financed the Freedom Rides, bailed Martin Luther King Jr. out of jail multiple times, and organized the celebrity contingent for the March on Washington. He was one of the first Black Americans to produce a major television special (1960) and used his platform to advance civil rights at every opportunity. He organized "We Are the World" alongside Quincy Jones and Ken Kragen. He received the National Medal of Arts, a Kennedy Center Honor, and a Tony Award. He joined the ancestors on April 25, 2023, at 96.