Prolific artist and fearless civil rights activist, Harry Belafonte never minced words when it came to challenging perceptions of race, social justice and pushing humanity to “make the world a little better.”

“I am a man who perceives life in a certain way, a man who rejects things that defecate on humankind, who rejects anything that will not give people room for dissent,” he once said.

A warrior at heart who seamlessly combined soulful performances in film and music with a fearless sensibility in matters of race and human rights, Belafonte died on Tuesday at age  96.Harry Belafonte sits for a portrait on Sept. 27, 2011 in his New York office. (Credit: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY via Imagn Content Services)

Belafonte was born in New York City to immigrant parents on March 1, 1927. His father, a Royal Navy chef, was from Martinique; his mother, a housekeeper, hailed from Jamaica. Both parents had racially mixed backgrounds. In Arnold Shaw’s biography, “Belafonte,” the performer talked about his family’s makeup and the influence it had on him as a child.

“If you could see my whole family congregated together, you would see every tonality of color, from the darkest black, like my Uncle Hyne, to the ruddiest white, like my Uncle Eric, a Scotsman,” he said.

Belafonte lived in New York until he was 9 when his mother moved him and his brother to her native country to protect them from Harlem’s harsh, Depression-era streets. He attended Jamaica’s private British boarding schools, which commonly used caning to discipline.

In Jamaica, he wasn’t always treated well by his lighter-skinned relatives, yet he found a way to embrace his new home, which had a major influence on him.

“I still have the impression of an environment that sang. Nature sang and the people sang, too,” Belafonte said in Shaw’s biography. “The streets of Kingston constantly rang with the songs of piping peddlers or politicians drumming up votes in the lifting singsong of the island. I loved it.”

Source: Harry Belafonte, actor, singer, activist dies at 96