Harry Belafonte, calypso star and civil rights champion, dies at 96......

Harry Belafonte, the effortlessly graceful singer credited with popularizing calypso in the U.S. in the 1950s who then marched at the forefront of the country’s civil rights struggle for half a century, died Tuesday, according to his spokesperson.He was 96.

Belafonte died of congestive heart failure in New York City, longtime spokesperson Ken Sunshine confirmed to NBC News.

Belafonte’s legacy as an arresting, charismatic singer and actor, which was sealed with the release of the landmark album “Calypso” in 1956, spanned more than six decades.

As recently as 2018 he made a bone-chilling appearance in the movie “BlacKkKlansman,” portraying an older civil rights leader who recounts the judicial railroading and brutal lynching of Jesse Washington, a Black teenage farmhand, in Waco, Texas, in 1916.

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